Black is the Color
by Alara
Summary: As a graduation present, ProfX takes some of the Xmen with him to England. But it's nearing Hallowe'en, when spirits walk freely, & something doesn't seem to want to let Rogue & Remy stay there quietly. Ghostly posession and romance abound...
1. PostApocalypse Life

Well, I teased about this in "Xanadu," and actually this is only one of possible two or three ballad/poem-based ROMYs I have in mind. I think I referred to this as a "short story;" however, looking at my plot layout, I don't know really how "short" a story it will be. Ah, well, I suppose we'll all find out together!  
And no worries-I am still writing Xanadu, but getting this on paper (or computer) is driving me nuts! Once I get at least some of this out of my system, I'm sure Xanadu will come along easier. Rather a mental block just now, however, as far as the actual words go. I know where the plot is going, it's just getting the words to explain it…without the words getting in the way!  
Anyway, points for people who can tell what ballad/poem this is based on, though this one is fairly well known to English-reading romantics. (Not romance readers, _romantics._)

Onward!

--Alara

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Black is the Color **(working title)

Chapter 1. Post-Apocalypse Life

Following the narrow defeat of Apocalypse, mutant leaders Charles Xavier and Eric Lenscherr had finally managed to put their differences aside and work together, as their vision years before had dictated. Obviosuly, the near-annihilation of the Earth had an effect on their former enemy.

Lenscherr, better known to the X-Men as Magneto, was actually managing to patch things up with his daughter and son Wanda and Pietro, much to everyone's surprise. The Waltons their little family unit wasn't, but all three were willing to try their best to make it work after nearly having the world destroyed. Apparently, his children's obvious concern for him during the battle, even after all he'd done to them in their lives, had made a profound impact on him and resulted in a fundamental change in Magneto's mental makeup. He no longer wanted to destroy all 'normal' humans (well, not really. He still wanted them to admit they were inferior to _homo sapiens mutens,_ but he didn't particularly want to kill them indiscriminately anymore). Instead, he was focusing his energies on helping to forge Xavier's X-men into better, more controlled examples of mutantkind, and focusing on cautiously becoming a father to his children, abandoned so long ago.

Professor Charles Xavier, for his part, was still sorting through the myriad of possible futures he'd gleaned from Apocalypse's mind, but now, nearly a year after the event in question, things were finally getting back to normal… or at least as normal as it ever got at the Xavier Institute.

The Institute's population had increased greatly with the influx of both Acolytes _and_ Brotherhood to their ranks; that meant not only Magneto's children, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, but also Toad, Blob, Avalanche, Gambit, Colossus, and Pyro. They had even convinced the genius inventor Forge to officially join up, although the time-traveling inventor remained living separate from the rest.

Life was not golden for all of them, however. Raven Darkholme, aka Mystique, was _persona non grata_ around the Institute. Following the Apocalypse fight, she had made a pathetic attempt to (insincerely) apologize to Kurt and Rogue for all she'd done to them—abandoning them both, using her daughter as a tool, spying on them as their principal…. They weren't talking to her, although every now and again she'd send a note or a letter to one or both of them. Mostly, they viewed these attempts at communication as merely another attempt to control them, and threw them away, unread; Mystique had made her adopted children paranoid of her but good.

There was much to distract Rogue and Kurt from their strange family situation, though. Since both the Brotherhood and the Acolytes had been absorbed into the X-Men, the Xavier Institute had become a little more crowded…and a _lot_ more tense. There was a lot of difficulty getting the separate "teams" to integrate, but with a lot of patience on Storm, Xavier, and even Logan's parts, the young mutants were finally starting to come together as a bizarre sort of family.

Lance and Kitty had initially tried to pair up again, but both soon agreed that it just wasn't going to work. Kitty recovered quickly, though, and had been dating the gentle Russian, Colossus, for about eight months.

Kurt was still going out with his longtime girlfriend Amanda, who kept the Institute informed about what was being said in regard to mutantkind on the street. Since it became apparent that a handful of mostly-teen aged mutants had literally saved the Earth, it seemed that generally, people were pretty cool with the idea of mutants living among them.

Changing that idea into reality, however, was proving more difficult, and there were several human-supremacist groups (who had formerly been ethnic-supremacist groups) who were lobbying still for mutant internment camps. Fortunately, most public leaders couldn't afford to shrug off the X-men's saving of the world, so those supremacist groups could mostly be ignored.

Remy and Rogue, by far the most cynical and the least "team-minded" of the whole place (excepting, of course, Logan), had, to everyone's surprise, hit it off very well after the integration of the Acolytes into the X-men. They made an announcement at the breakfast table that they were 'officially seeing each other' to avoid annoying gossip. The attempt to curtail gossip didn't work: immediately, there was a flurry of speculation among the girls of the group as to what, exactly, had gone on between the two Southerners during Remy's kidnapping of Rogue nearly a year and a half ago, that she'd go out with him _now_. Rogue put a quick stop to the speculation with a few whispered comments, which produced either smirks or looks of sheerest terror. The Southerner didn't care _what_ they really thought, only that they not annoy her with speculating out loud about her personal life.

Remy simply found the idea of carrying on a relationship (of any sort) 'in public' (eg, under the eyes of the whole Institute) to be a great novelty, and took a perverse joy in embarrassing other students by catching them trying to spy on himself and his _paramour _when they got a rare moment alone

Despite the whispered, giggled comments about her boyfriend, Rogue was still pretty happy with her life. As Xavier had foreseen, Rogue had finally achieved control over her absorption powers, about six months after the Apocalypse Incident. As fate would have it, though, like they hadn't given her enough trouble already, once she found that control, they mutated _again_, about four months after she'd achieved control. Remy kept her laughing, though, and she dealt with the new side-effects with a much better mood than she would have done before the Apocalypse Incident, or before Remy.

Now, she had control over most other powers she'd absorbed, and was no longer absorbing people's psyches from touching them—unless she did so intentionally. She had complete control over her original powers. No, _now_ what she had to be careful of was others' personal objects. She could handle it, though, because this mutation was so much more benign than what she _used_ to have to deal with.

Anything that had a great amount of personal energy invested in it—a child's favorite stuffed animal, for instance, or a particularly favored book—would give her "flashes" of memories associated with that item. For her to get anything concrete, however, the person had to have handled the item relatively recently, and to get anything other than a momentary flash, she had to purposely access this new facet of her absorption powers. Since she could now walk in a crowd with relative calm, Rogue figured getting just a glimpse of someone else's life—which did _not_ stay with her forever, just a few moments—was a fair trade-off. Also, she'd managed to help a few anxious parents find wandering children at the local park; having a mundanely _useful_ power was a nice change, too. The parents' profuse praise only helped to foster the image of mutant powers as simply very useful, rare skills, like being able to play the piano very well. Not everyone could do it, but it was nice to know a few people around _could,_ should the need arise

So, yes, things were about as normal as they ever got around the Xavier Institute.

"Professor X has gone insane, you know," Rogue remarked conversationally to Remy, as they sat on the roof together in the mid-October night. She leaned one shoulder against him.

"Oh?"

"Taking a bunch of just-graduated-from-high-school mutants and one human with him to Merrie Olde England while _he's_ at a human-mutant relations conference, and expecting us to not only behave ourselves, but learn something about English history while we're there? He's insane."

"Ah, but he _is_ only taking those eighteen and over. It's only…" he trailed off for a moment. "H'm. Remy, you, Kitty, Piotr, Lance, Amara, Kurt, Amanda, Bobby, Tabby, Pyro, Sam, Scott and Jeannie." He counted the names off on his long fingers. "Fourteen… and only Stormy and de Wolverine to supervise. _Chere_," he said, sounding mock-surprised, "I t'ink you may be right. De good professor has gone mad."

"_Tell _me about it," Rogue groaned. "At least Wanda and Pietro—trouble by themselves—are going to get to spend some quality time with Magneto, as strange as that sounds."

"Yes, and de Beast is remaining here to make sure the younger recruits do not destroy de mansion."

"True."

They both considered the situation for a moment. Remy sighed and said, "It's true den. He's insane."

"Ah _said_ so, didn't I? Sad… such a waste of a brilliant mind."

They kept their calm for a moment, then laughed, Remy's velvet, Rogue's like bells chiming.

Suddenly, Kitty phased up through the roof. "Hey, could you two quit talking already? _Some_ of us are trying to get some beauty rest for the transatlantic flight tomorrow morning."

"_P'tite_," Remy leaned toward her charmingly. "You don't need any beauty rest. Come join the conversation."

"What, that Xavier's insane for taking us all to England? Like, _duh._ Of course he is! Now _come on,_ Rogue, you need sleep. You'll be mean tomorrow if you don't get sleep, you know it. So, like, kiss Remy goodnight and _go to sleep._ Besides," she added brightly, "Logan's coming upstairs." She vanished downward through the shingles.

"_Merde_," Remy muttered. "Guess dat's good night, then, _chere_. I'll see you in de morning."

"Night, Cajun." Rogue smiled, and kissed him briefly. "See ya in the morning." Following Kitty's example, she carefully phased them both through the roof; they landed in the hallway. Footsteps on the stairs warned them that Wolverine was, indeed, coming. They quickly departed for their own rooms.

Wolverine arrived in the hallway a moment later, and scented the two Southerners on the still air. "Teenagers," he muttered to himself, half-smiling. He had, of course, been totally against Rogue seeing Remy at first—after all, the thief had _drugged_ and _kidnapped_ her only about a year and a half ago. But seeing how Remy brought Rogue out of her shell—even _before_ she'd gained control over her powers—had softened him toward the relationship somewhat.

There was also the fact that Rogue had bitched him out royally, as only Rogue could do, for interfering too much in her personal life. Following that, he backed off of Remy, but remained vigilant for any over-the-line behavior. Rogue couldn't complain about that, however, since Logan did the same to every other couple in the mansion. "Going to the same Institute and getting along with former enemies," he told her, "doesn't mean I'm gonna let _anyone's_ hormones run amok, so you're getting the same treatment as Kurt and Amanda and Kitty and Piotr are getting. That's not negotiable, kid," he'd growled firmly, and Rogue could only go along with it.

So he policed the various relationships in the mansion, which was why he had been chosen as a chaperone for the England trip. Privately, he agreed with the kids: Xavier had gone plumb crazy, taking that many teens along, and his own imposing presence safely away at the conference, but most of the kids were fairly responsible, and at least there were pubs most _everywhere_ in England. Sure, the beer in most of them wasn't _that_ great, but that would only keep the kids from drinking too much—Logan personally didn't care overmuch about the taste of his beer, only that there _was_ beer to be had. And who knew? Xavier might be right, and the exposure to another culture, however similar to their own, might be good for the kids in the long run. At least they'd all have an interesting vacation, and this was a good, relatively cheap graduation present for them.

_Well, sleep isn't going to come standing out here in the hallway_, he thought to himself. _And the Blackbird II isn't going to fly itself in the morning. And…_ he paused, listened intently for a moment, letting his sensitive ears filter information to him. _And the kids are all mostly asleep, or getting there. Close enough, anyway,_ he shrugged, and went to bed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

In another room of the mansion, Professor Xavier woke from a troubled dream. _A new danger to mutantkind. Just a dream, or more of Apocalypse's visions? It has something to do with this conference trip, but what, I don't know. I _can't_ cancel the trip on the students at this date, though… I suppose I'll have to warn the senior staff in the morning… and hope that this is just a normal dream._

He uneasily went back to sleep, conveniently ignoring the fact that he hadn't had a "normal" dream since the Apocalypse Incident.

Quiet—if not peace—fell over the Xavier mansion, then, and the hours sped by to the new day, the day they were flying to England.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Yeah, I know pretty much _no_ hints as to which ballad/poem this is from in this chapter, but if you read my stuff, you know my first chapters are mostly exposition, anyway.

Comments? Questions? Clickety-click on that little box, you know, the one that says, "REVIEW"! Let me know what you think so far! --Alara


	2. Travels Along the Roads

Ahh… I think I forgot to mention in Ch. 1, this is set about…oh…a year after Ascension I and II, the final two episodes of X-Men: Evolution. I estimate _those _episodes, in turn, to be about six months after Cajun Spice (which is, of course, one of my favorite episodes!). Most of the exposition in chapter one is based off of the ending of Ascension II, though I did try not to give _too _much away. That said, however, you do _not_ have to have seen that episode to understand this fic; that's why all that intro is given, to give you a frame of reference. All you need to know is in that loooooong expositionary passage in the beginning of Chapter 1. (Which, BTW, I have rewritten to make it a little clearer, a little easier to read, but the info is pretty much the same. (I think.) )

On with the fic!

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"…and _no powers,_ kids, all right?" Logan finished his lecture, growling. "We don't need to have people think we're all crazy when Professor X is in this conference telling the world we're _not_ crazy. Ya got me?"

A murmur of "Yes"s and "Yeah"s rose from the assembled teenagers, most of whom were not paying much attention—with the exception of Scott and Jean, of course.

"When I open this door, you all need to go check into your own hotel rooms. You all know who your roommates are, and there's no changing them now."

He eyed them a moment more, and mentally shrugged. _I've just gotta hope they don't do anything stupid…_ He reached for the door control, and paused. "Yeah, one more thing… you decide to drink, fine, you're all legal here, but you get yourself in trouble, you're gettin' yourself _out_ of trouble and I hear nothing about it. If it's bad enough that I _do_ hear about it, _then_ you're in even bigger trouble with me, and you'll wish I'd just left you in jail here. Got _that?_"

Most of the faces in front of him paled at that threat, and _very _sincere "Yes, Mr. Logan"s rose from the assembled teens, who had settled down somewhat at the implied threat. _Well, at least they're not going to go tearing off immediately now,_ he sighed. He hit the control to the Blackbird's door, and the ramp smoothly lowered to the ground. A stampede of Discmans and magazines went by. _Kids_. Whywas he here at this _school _again?

"Hey, Logan," Rogue said, pausing before she exited the plane. "Get a beer later, sugah?" She said, mock-flirty. "'Cause I can't pass up the 'Rogue having a beer with Logan' photo op. Gotta keep up the rep with the kids back home," she laughed.

_Oh. That's why._ He grinned his crooked grin at the young woman who was so like a daughter to him. "Sure, darlin'," he drawled. "I'll even buy you one."

She flashed a smile at him, ducking out into the sunlight, the white streaks glinting in her hair. "See ya later, then!" She jogged out and met Remy, who courteously took her bag for her. The pair headed into the hotel, and Logan set about securing the Blackbird.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Like, say 'cheese,' Mr. Logan!" Kitty Pryde called from across the table, camera at the ready. She'd been taking photos all night. He looked up in mid-swig, startled. At the last second, Rogue landed beside him on the bench, pint glass in hand, just in time to get in the shot. The others crowded around Kitty as she waited for the digital picture to display. There was a shout of laughter from the group. Kitty turned the camera around to show him. He had to admit, the photo was pretty funny: his own eyes were half-narrowed, and he simply looked pissed that his beer had been interrupted, while Rogue was caught mid-laugh, hair swinging, and was giving him a look out of the side of her eye like an amused "what is up with him?"

"Ahhh, good times in England," Rogue snickered, then squeaked as an arm snaked around her waist as Remy slid in beside her. Kitty snatched the camera out of Wolverine's hand, and quickly snapped another image, perfectly in time to catch Remy pecking Rogue on the cheek. The rest of the teens crowded in, even more interested to see _this_ photo, since all attempts to photograph the Southern couple in the States had ended with broken cameras (or broken noses).

Another shout of laughter. Logan winced, his sensitive hearing unprepared for the sheer amount of _sound_ that could come out of fourteen young throats at once.

"Hey, what's that over Rogue's shoulder?" Amanda asked, pointing at the tiny screen. Kitty leaned in closer.

"I don't know." The entire group standing across the table glanced up, as one, at Remy and Rogue. Reflexively, they looked behind themselves, where the rest were looking, but saw only the bare wood-paneled wall behind them.

"What is it? Let me see." She said, and Kitty handed the camera over. Both Logan and Remy leaned in to see the screen, Remy resting his chin on her shoulder.

"Just looks like some light reflected back, _p'tite_," he shrugged after a glance at the screen, which showed himself kissing Rogue. Oddly, however, there was a bluish-white blur just to the other side of Rogue, near the white streak in her hair.

"But there's nothing on the wall to reflect!" Rogue said, and handed the camera to Logan. "What do you think?"

He gave them all a pointed look. "I think Half-Pint, there, needs to put the camera away, and I think the rest of you have had enough to drink, and should get some sleep. Remember, we're going on that driving countryside tour tomorrow." He couldn't help the sarcasm that entered his voice. "I'm sure you'll all want to be wide-awake for _that_."

Low grumbles erupted from the group, but they were half-hearted at best: it was late, they'd had a long flight earlier that day, and most of them were beat.

"Go on, get." Wolverine shooed them away, adding, "Room check in fifteen minutes." That got them moving a little faster, most dropping an extra euro or two on the bar as they left.

When they were gone, Logan turned and looked at the wall behind Rogue's seat. She was right: there _was_ nothing there to explain the blur in the photo. He just wouldn't mention the odd space of cold air that had come from Rogue's direction while Kitty was taking her picture.

But he'd like to know what the strange image in the photo was, as well, particularly in light of the warning Professor X had given him and Ororo that morning, about the dream of impending danger to the X-Men. Could this—blur—be some indication of a new enemy? He'd have to be vigilant…and simply hope that Kitty's camera really _was_ broken, and his worry was for nothing.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next morning, Ororo Monroe sighed into her cup of coffee. She didn't normally drink the stuff, but after seeing the hyper state the young adults with them were in, she gratefully accepted Logan's offer of some bolstering caffeine. It seemed she would need the help: the fourteen of them were sitting at various tables around the lobby of the hotel, about half of them (not just Kitty) talking a mile a minute about the places they were going to see during the countryside tour. It appeared that most of the historic stops on this particular tour had been taverns at one time or another in their existence, and furthermore, some of the locals at the pub last night had told them that most in the area were rumored to be haunted. This close to Halloween, Ororo couldn't really blame them for being excited by the prospect, never mind that most didn't really expect anything supernatural to happen—the _idea_ that something _might _happen seemed to be enough to get the kids amped up.

Well, most of them. Ororo turned when a gentle hand tapped her on the shoulder; it was, as she expected, Jean, who had a hesitant expression on her face.

"Yes, Jean? What is it that you need?"

"Well…" the redhead hesitated, and bit her lip. "See, this haunted tavern tour thingy that's going on today… Scott and I were wondering… Well, we were wondering if there was another option, see, we just aren't _into _that sort of thing… Look, I know this was all set up beforehand, but…"

Ororo considered it for a moment. There _were_ traditional museums in the area, after all, and she, with her claustrophobia, had no wish to sit in a cramped touring car for eight hours. "Allow me to speak with Wolverine a moment," she replied, and walked over to the surly Canadian. She explained Jean's request to him.

He frowned, thinking. "Listen up, troops," he said, his rough voice easily carrying over the teens' chatter. Fourteen pairs of eyes turned in his direction. "Any of you not particularly care if you go on this driving trip today? There might be another option."

"Which is…?" Amara asked.

"A more traditional museum tour," Ororo replied smoothly. "If enough of you want to go, we could split the group between the activities."

Rogue snorted. "Museums or taverns… Hmm." She said mock-consideringly. "Well, I'm sticking with the tavern tour, thank ya very much."

Kitty chimed in. "Yeah, I'm, like, so not in the mood for a museum today. It's too nice outside!"

Similar sentiments came from about half the group. In the end, it was settled that Rogue, Remy, Kitty, Piotr, Kurt, Amanda, Bobby and Lance would go with Logan on the planned tour, while Scott, Jean, Amara, Tabby, Pyro, and Sam would stick around town and do the museum tours with Ororo.

"It makes it easier on me, anyway," Logan commented to Ororo, "having a few less kids to try not to lose. We'll meet you back at the hotel later."

The groups split up, and went their separate ways, Ororo's group setting out along the clean-swept sidewalks, Logan's walking around the back of the hotel, where they viewed their day's vehicle for the first time. The creaky tour "bus" which awaited them looked like it had been built during World War One; no one moved to get in.

Remy eyed the rattletrap dubiously. "Dat t'ing gon' t' make it out to the road?" He turned to Logan. "I'm not doing any walking, _homme."_

Rogue prodded him from behind. "Get moving, Cajun, or you're the first one _pushing_ that thing."

Amid similar comments, and much joshing and jostling, the teens loaded onto the… motorized cart… and settled down. To everyone's surprise, Logan seated himself in the passenger seat.

"Like, you're not driving, Mr. Logan?" Kitty asked, startled.

"Nope."

"Well, like, who is, then?"

"I'd guess this guy." Logan said, gesturing out the window at a man tottering toward them. "Hoboy," he muttered under his breath, as the man came closer.

The group watched him slowly walk to the "bus."

Bobby muttered, loud enough that everyone could hear, "Who's older? This car or him?"

"My sentiments exactly," Amanda muttered back.

"I would very much be liking to know if legally blind he is, to be driving such a group," Piotr said. "Deaths of the tourists cannot make a very good record for him, no?"

Kitty eyed him askance. "Like _you've_ got anything to worry about, Tin-Man," she said. "Of all the people this guy's ever driven anywhere, you're probably the least likely to die!"

He smiled fondly at her. "Do not be worrying, _Katja,_ I will be protecting of you."

Logan cleared his throat pointedly, and the group obediently looked to the front of the bus, where the driver was finally settling himself into the heavily padded seat on the right. He turned around, a wide grin splitting his face.

"Weeell!" He exclaimed. "Well. What a _fine _delight it is to be seeing some young faces in m' Old Trusty, here. _Wonderful_ to have some people on this tour who can really fully appreciate the taverns, eh?" He cackled. "Well, my name is Old Robert, yes, include the 'Old' in my name, that's what I am and I make no mistake about it, no _indeed_! Now," he leaned toward them as though imparting a secret, though he was speaking to nine people, and said, "now, I know Old Trusty and I, we don't look like we can get too far on our own, but appearances can be deceiving, y'know! Yes, indeed. Deceiving." He nodded. "Much like these taverns we're going to see only _seem_ to be quiet, calm—what do you Americans call 'em? Ah, yes—calm 'watering holes,' at certain times of the year—like now, for instance!—they go from peaceful——to _poltergeist-ridden!_" He waved his hands dramatically; the teens chuckled good-naturedly. He grinned wider in response. He was corny, but entertaining nonetheless.

"Now, if any of you should see something strange go on," he pointed dramatically at Kitty and Piotr, who were sitting together, "or feel strange yourselves," and pointed this time at Rogue and Remy, "why, it's just the ghosts taking a liking to you. Just be sure they don't like you _too_ much; they just may not want to leave, and I'm sure _that's_ not a souvenir you want to be taking with you! Eh?" He looked at Amanda, sitting beside Kurt. "Think that be something you'd like, missy?"

She glanced around a second, startled at his direct question. "Uh—well—no," she replied.

"Good, good! She's got a good head on her shoulders, boy," he said to Kurt, "keep her around! She'll keep you set right!" He looked around the interior of the bus, 'til his eyes lit on Kitty—or more specifically, the digital camera in her hand. "Ahh, she's come prepared!" He crowed, gesturing at her. "Now, miss, have you ever been to a place with spirits before?"

"Well, like, not that I, like, know of."

"Hah-_hah!_ I thought not. Well, if you be taking pictures, and they be coming up with spots or glows or summat in it, don't you be worrying that your camera is broken, no! No, that's just the ghosts saying hello to you—or to whoever is in the picture."

"Really? Like, do they look like people?"

He shrugged. "Well, and sometimes they do, miss, sometimes they do. But more often they show up as a round bright circle, or a glowing blur, like there's something on the lens or a mirror being reflected. If they're red or orange, though, well _stay away!_ There's a reason the color red is the 'angry' color. Stick with white or blue, though, and you'll do all right."

"A blue or white blur?" Kitty asked excitedly.

Everyone in the bus turned and looked at Rogue.

She glared back. "What're _you_ all looking at?"

They all turned back, except for Remy, who was smirking at her. "What?" She whispered to him, as Old Robert finished his spiel. "That's just a coincidence. Honestly, I have enough weird things going on in my life without ghosts getting involved!"

"_Chere,"_ he reminded her, "I don't t'ink you have a choice in de matter."

"It was _not _a ghost," she hissed back fiercely, and turned her attention firmly to Old Robert.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"…And this next place is where we'll be having our supper—I think most of you Americans refer to it as 'dinner'—and a last pint of the day. If the weather holds…" Old Robert said dubiously, as he navigated the bus down yet another steep country road. It was about eight o'clock in the evening, now, and they had visited nine haunted taverns throughout the day. At each place, they had stopped, taken a tour of the premises, and heard a yarn or two about the ghosts inhabiting the place, and how they had gotten to _be_ ghosts.

It seemed there had been a _lot_ of hangings, burnings, and skewerings in this part of England in bygone days. This information was courtesy of Rogue, whose new 'power,' it seemed, was especially resonant to _dead_ people's emotionally-invested items and favorite objects. After the fourth time she had leapt out of a chair, or quickly removed her hand from a tree or table, Kurt, Remy, and Bobby had quickly conferred and begun singing a rendition of "My Favorite Things" from _The Sound of Music_ at her Of course, they rewrote the lyrics: "Lawmen with sharp swords and hangmen with nooses / Stealers and cheaters with shady excuses / Creepy dead people made into some roasts / These are a few of Rogue's favorite ghosts…" It didn't help that any time she jumped, Wolverine sent her a half-glare, a silent warning to her, to not to reveal herself as a mutant to Old Robert. He _seemed_ all right, but you never knew…

At about six-thirty, the lovely sunset had suddenly been occluded by dark, glowering storm-clouds. Old Robert (of whom everyone had grown fond over the day, Logan's paranoia notwithstanding) consulted briefly with Logan, and it was decided that they would press on to the next stop, get dinner, and then head back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, fate—and Old Trusty—had other ideas. About three quarters of a mile from the next tavern, Old Trusty slowed at the bottom of a hill, coughed, sputtered—and silently, smoothly, coasted into a ditch at the bottom of the hill. The people inside Old Trusty didn't remain silent for long.

"Aw, man!" Kurt groaned. "_Now_ what do we do?"

"We _get out,_ Fuzzball," Logan growled. "Whaddya think?"

Old Robert turned around anxiously. "Is everyone all right back there, then?"

"That was de _smoothest_ non-crash I've ever been in, homme," Remy assured him, smiling. Rogue could feel his silent laughter shaking their seat. She thumped him in the side; he ignored her. "I think if we hadn't all watched us go into de ditch, I'd have thought you had _parked_ dis…uh, bus."

Old Robert sighed. "Well, as long as everyone's all right, then. The next tavern isn't far, really, but.." he trailed off, and eyed them uncertainly. "Well, I think we might have to stay the night in the village there."

"What?" "Where would we—?" "Like, I don't have my PJs or anything with me!" "Hey, really? Mr. Logan, can we?" This last comment from the irrepressible Bobby, who had wanted to stay in one of these haunted taverns all day.

Logan turned to Old Robert. "Explain yourself, bub," he said tersely.

"Well, you see the storm clouds moving in, they'll be here right soon enough, and there won't be any getting out of this valley 'til the water clears. And I won't be able to get Old Trusty working 'til morning for sure; once she's quit for the night, she's gone."

"Like the ghosts," someone muttered, and a nervous ripple of laughter ran through the bus. Logan silenced them with a glare.

"We are _not_ staying in the village overnight," he announced. "I have my cell with me; I'll just call Ms. Monroe and have her come pick us up."

Old Robert sighed. "You see, we really did break down at the worst possible place. There are no cellular towers around for miles."

"Then I'll call from the village," Logan growled.

"No electricity. It's a very small, traditional village," he explained hurriedly, at Logan's glare.

"Then I'll _walk_ to where there_ is_ a phone." Logan gritted out.

Someone—probably Kurt—muffled a snort of laughter at his expression.

Old Robert merely lifted a bushy eyebrow. "And where would you be getting your direction from, then? The nearest town is thirty-six miles away, unfortunately; that's why this was one of the last stops for the day."

Logan fumed for a minute, then said grudgingly, "Well, let's at least go see what's in this village, and I'll make my decision then."

Kurt could have sworn he saw a look of triumph cross Old Robert's face. Then the old man said, "Well, let's gather up our things and be on our way."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Review Replies:**

**Ishandahalf—**Woot! Wow, just seeing a fic from me makes you happy? Don't make me blush… :) Thanks for your comment on my setup, tho as my author note indicated it's been tweaked a bit, mostly for readability. Ohh, and you haven't even _seen_ freaky dreams yet!

**Peacebeyondthedoor—**Your 'fast with the couples' made me realize I hadn't put too much timeframe indications in Chapter one, so re-read that if you feel like it and let me know if it makes any more sense. :)

**buggy-such—**Hey! Back. Yeah… lots of psycho teen mutants, but it's all fun. You, too—re-read chapter one, that should better answer your 'how do rogue's powers work now' question. Let me know if not!

**Cat2fat900—**Yes, and plot teeth HURT, I'll tell ya. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

**Sweet Poison—**I totally grinned for like 15 minutes after getting a 'Mad Brilliant'! That's waaaay beyond 2 thumbs up or five stars! Woot! Please keep reading! Thanks for checking it out. I know my synopsis sucks :)

**Smiley—**Your English is fine! Thanks for your kind words, please keep reading!

**A.M.bookworm247—**Thanks! Please keep reading, more 'interestingly challenging natured' story ahead!


	3. Dreams, or Visions?

Warning, this Author's Note contains an Off Topic plea; skip if you don't feel like reading it. :)

Okaaaay… I seriously wrote that storm, etc, of last chapter _before_ Katrina hit the South… My thoughts and prayers are with those left destitute and endangered by the hurricane, of course.

**Begin Off Topic plea**: And people, seriously, if you're looking for someone to 'blame' for the hurricane hitting, please find something else to do with your time… Blaming a person or organization for a _hurricane_ is like blaming someone for the sun! Yes, relief efforts have been a bit more disorganized than I think most people are happy with, but remember: They didn't know _exactly_ where the storm was going to hit—after all, it changed path at the very last hour. They also didn't anticipate that the levees holding the lake would break—no one ever saw such a huge storm before!

Natural disasters like Katrina have been happening as long as this Earth has had weather, and the human race has always managed to survive 'em, even if it meant abandoning a town or leaving behind a job to preserve the lives of their family members. All it took was the help of those fortunate enough _not_ to have been affected severely by the disaster. And in our modern times, we have tons of stuff going for us to help fix damage caused by a natural disaster—the people in the Middle Ages or the Roman Empire didn't have such advantages, but they managed not only to survive, but to thrive as much as their times would allow. _Our_ times allow for quite a bit of 'thriving,' so count your blessings!

If you're the praying type, keep _all_ affected— people stranded, rescue workers, government officials, people rescued—in your prayers; who knows but that someone in charge of something might have a God-given epiphany and see a good way to help a lot of people quickly; who knows but that _one more_ prayer might save someone's life. If you're _not_ the praying type, please, just keep them in your thoughts—no one knows what effect your thoughts might have on _them_,but thinking about the needs of others before your own _will_ have a big effect on you, and how you act—it tends to make people nicer, thinking of others... And if you want to physically do something, there's lots of stuff you could do: some church group in Houston, TX, is asking for freezer baggies of toothbrushes and Clean-Wipes and stuff to be given to people who have nothing left (if I find the website or contact info I'll e-mail it to anyone who asks for it); you could kick in a buck or two, if you can afford it, to the Red Cross or whatever local charity is in your area. If you're of age and qualify (weight, health, etc), you could donate blood—there are a lot of people who were hospitalized in the cities affected who couldn't get out who need blood. There's lots of stuff to be done, but if we all pitch in even a little tiny bit—half an hour out of one day is all that's needed to donate blood—if we all help out a little, we can make this disaster not-quite-so-bad to clean up and rebuild (or relocate!). **Here endeth the Off Topic plea. Thanks for reading it!**

OK. So. OT over, I _am _still writing "Xanadu," but the next chapter is giving me…issues… so here is the next bit of "Black is the Color." LOTS of ghostly activity here—or is it only a dream? Read it and tell me what _you_ think! And it becomes blatantly obvious which poem I'm basing this fic off of… Who Can Name That Poem? Bonus points for the author!

Enjoy!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Black is the Color **

Chapter 3. Dreams, or Visions?

About twenty minutes later, they were all trudging through an inch of mud in a sudden, sleeting, freezing October rain. They had tried to move Old Trusty out of the ditch, but even Colussus' strength couldn't move the hunk of ancient metal from the ditch. They had to leave it where it was.

Amanda had had the foresight to stuff a poncho into her carry-on bag, so she was all right, and Kitty surreptitiously phased herself and Piotr so that the rain fell through them. Bobby was freezing his skin ever-so-slightly so the sleety rain bounced off of him. Remy draped his beloved duster around Rogue's shoulders, and wouldn't take it back, despite her protests that she was _fine_ and some rain wouldn't hurt her. She kept protesting 'til he threatened to start singing "Rogue's Favorite Ghosts" at her again, and pointed out that he was already soaked now, so what was the point of _her_ getting soaked, too? She stopped arguing, but did half-glower at him all the way to the village. Kurt and Lance simply had to deal with getting drenched. Logan, of course, ignored the weather, and Old Robert remained as cheerful as ever, keeping up a running patter of comments like, "Not much further, now," and "Watch that puddle—it's deep."

At first, they hardly noticed when they entered the village. The small houses sat low against the surrounding hills, and seemed to blend into the stormy, dark landscape seamlessly. Candle or firelight could be glimpsed through the windows as they passed, but most people seemed to be well tucked-in for the night.

Unlike the villagers' houses, there was no mistaking when they approached the inn; it was an imposing structure of wood and stone which loomed up from a flattened hilltop that overlooked the lonely moors that lay to the west. The inn was two-and-a-half stories tall, half-timbered at the top, and had very few modern changes—like Old Trusty, it seemed to not have been changed since its building. A low, thick wall around the building enclosed a perfectly preserved cobblestone courtyard, and an old stables lay to the rear. Most of the heavy shutters were closed, but a few were cracked open, enough that the straggling group could see people inside.

For an instant, as Rogue peered through the pouring rain, she could have _sworn_ the women inside were wearing long dresses, and the men were mostly in some uniform—then she blinked the rain out of her eyes, and saw they were dressed normally. She shook her wet hair out of her eyes, frowning at herself. Remy turned to her. "Y'okay, _chere?"_

"I think I'm more tired than I thought," she admitted. _You were just seeing things badly through the rain, Rogue,_ she told herself, and she almost believed it… except that the closer she got to the inn, the colder she felt. She shivered suddenly, more of a shudder, stilled by Remy's arm across her shoulders. "I think I just need some food."

"We're almost there." He told her, and they all trudged up the hill. Rogue could feel Logan's gaze on her; he hadn't missed her sudden shiver, nor, she was sure, had he missed the jerk of her head at what she thought she had seen.

They trailed through the gates of the wall in ones and twos, stamping the mud from their frozen feet and wiping streaming rain out of their eyes in the relative shelter between the inn and the wall. The front door burst open suddenly, and a large woman beckoned them in.

"Come _in,_ come _in,_ get _out_ of the rain, _there's _a good duckie," she shouted over the howling wind and sheeting rain. "_In,_ in, come, dry y'salves by the fire, it's big enowt f' all o' you," she waved them inside. Old Robert entered without hesitation. They all looked at each other, shrugged, and followed him inside.

The inn was everything an eighteenth-century inn _should _be on a rainy, sleety October night: warm, and cozy, and well-filled with villagers, who welcomed the strangers with claps on the back and offers of blankets. As most of the group lingered by the large stone fireplace, drying their soaked feet, the inn workers brought them bowls of hearty stew and thick, crusty bread—apparently the eighteenth-century rule applied even to the food, but at least it was good food.

The locals bought "the puir soaked kiddies" pints of the home brew, a good, sweet, bubbly ale. They were informed by one and all that _this_ inn had been famous for _this_ ale since the inn had been built in 1729, and didn't they agree it was the _finest_ ale they'd ever had?

Most of them never having _had_ ale before, agreed cheerfully enough that yes, it _was_ the _finest_ ale they'd drunk. The warmth and cheer of the place was even enough to drive away the chill Rogue had felt, and as she wasn't seeing anyone in anything other than twenty-first century clothing, she wasn't going to complain.

"So I wonder where we are going to spend the night," Kurt said, turning in front of the fire to dry the fur hidden by his image inducer. He looked across the inn, to where Logan was gesturing violently (well, more violently than usual—Logan did _everything_ violently) as he spoke with the large woman who had welcomed them in.

"I dunno," Amanda said, her dusky face concerned. "But if Mr. Logan thinks we're going to walk through _that—_" she gestured at the window "—for thirty-six miles, he's got another think coming. At least, _I'm_ not walking that far. We'd all freeze!"

"Yeah," Rogue agreed, her Southern accent drawling across the cozy space by the fire. "Ah'm a Mississippian; we don't _do_ freezin' northwestern European winter weather—especially not weird freezin' northwestern European winter weather when it comes in the _fall_."

"I agree, _cherie._ Too cold here for dis Cajun's blood. However," he leaned close to her, a mischievous glint in his eye, "You get too cold, y' give ole Gambit a holler, _hein?_ He'll come and warm you right up—"

"You'd better be giving her an extra blanket and leaving, Cajun," Wolverine's familiar grate came from behind them. They all turned to face him. "Turns out we have to stay here tonight, kids," he said grudgingly, and ignored the muffled cheer from Bobby. "The villagers have no room, and the water's rising too fast for the few cars to get out of town, anyway. But Bettie, the landlady there," he jerked his thumb toward the large woman, "says there are plenty of beds upstairs that we can use, and even enough rooms for all of us, pretty much. The villagers are going to loan most of the group extra clothes for the night—sorry, Colussus, they don't build 'em like us around here. So let's go upstairs and pick out rooms."

Kitty wrinkled her nose. "Like, are we going to be sleeping in three-hundred year old beds? That's so, like, gross."

Logan gave her a look, and spoke with exaggerated patience. "Half-Pint." He sighed; it had been a long day. "The actual frames are apparently built into the walls and floors, but there are real, modern mattresses _in_ the frames. D'you think I'd make you sleep on straw, or whatever-it-is they slept on back then? I'm not _that_ mean."

"Says you, you Danger Room fanatic." Someone muttered, and they snickered, following Logan up the narrow stairs.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

_For once, the damn powers are working in my favor…_ Rogue mused to herself, looking around at the two-room mini-suite she had snagged. In _every_ other room, she had gotten 'flashes' from nearly every object; she could hardly stand in a room without receiving some image from something. This room, however, was 'quiet;' it was merely a bonus that it was quite pretty, and so cozily built it even made _her_ feel at ease.

The first room seemed to just be a sitting room, with a wide, large window in the wall opposite the hallway door. The window, like all the other ones in the top floor, was heavily barred, secured against the hellish weather outside, but Rogue could see that the glass was a beautiful casemented window, which she'd bet was original to the building. The room was sparsely furnished; a large chair, nearly big enough for two, sat in the corner by the window, and a long narrow chest of drawers, built into the wall, ran along the left hand wall, nearly meeting the doorframe. Candles covered its surface; Rogue had them all lit, since there was no other source of illumination. Elaborately carved scrollwork framed the window and door and decorated the chest of drawers. The right hand wall was unadorned, merely serving to separate this small room from the equally small bedroom next door.

The bedroom itself was so small that it seemed to have been built around the bed frame. One of the "long" sides of the bed was barely a step inside the door, and there was an equally small space between the opposite side of the bed and the opposite wall. The headboard was actually a carved-out part of the wall, like the rest of the furniture, and had built-in candleholders, in which Rogue had placed lit candles. They gave the room a cozy glow, especially with the borrowed handmade quilted comforter covering the bed. The foot of the bed had tall corner posts which served as extra candleholders; they stretched higher than Rogue's head. The foot of the bed faced the window, which matched the window in the sitting room and was as wide as the wall permitted: from the bed, one could see hardly anything of the window's frame. This one, too, was barred over, but even the heavy metal bars did not distort the view. _Well, what view there would be if there wasn't a freak sleet storm going on outside…_ Rogue thought, in a much better mood than she'd been before. Everyone was feeling better after a hot bath and fire-warmed clothes; they all had just come upstairs after a final drink with the locals, and were all settling in for the night.

There was a tap at the outside door; Rogue went through the bedroom door and crossed to the hallway door. Upon opening it, she found Remy lounging in the doorway, somehow looking like he'd just fallen off the cover of _Cajun GQ,_ despite the lack of modern amenities

"You going to be all right in here, _cherie?_"he asked softly, brushing her hair behind her ear. "Most o' the rest of us have some roommate, or someone right next door, at least…"

She smiled at his concern. "Yeah, Remy, I'll be fine. Y'all are just a holler away, anyway, right?" She said. "This room… I don't know. It feels…safe. Warm. Familiar, somehow, though I've never seen a room with built-in furniture like this. I'll be fine."

"You sure?" His dark eyes searched her face intently. "You had some bad moments today wit' dose new powers o' yours…"

"I know. But this room doesn't bother me. _At all."_ She said, and he sighed.

"All right, _ma chere._ But you need anyt'ing at all, you give a yell."

"All right. Good night."

"_Bonne nuit."_ He dropped a kiss on her forehead, turned, and headed down the hall to his own room, which he was sharing with Piotr. Smiling, she turned, doused the candles in the sitting room, entered the bedroom, blew out the last candles, and snugged down beneath the warm comforter.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

And Rogue dreamed, dreamed deeply…

_Rogue? She was no rogue, nay, no knave at all! No, her name was Bess, the daughter of Landlord David Dawson, who was the innkeeper by the high moors. The name was given her by her mother, who had been one generation removed from a Gypsy; she had died when Bess was eight. Bess' given name was the exotic "Arabessa," but she was a friendly, kind soul, and went by the far less imposing "Bess," a nickname given her by her father, who was a native of the shire where they lived. _

_In looks, she took after her mother far more than her father; she had her mother's rich, wavy black hair, not her father's blonde (well, he had been blonde before he went bald). Her mother's own deep, dark eyes stared out of her face, as opposed to her father's light blue. She had received her father's own paler complexion, however, her skin a pure alabaster, only a sheen of her mother's gold-toned skin coming through. Her lips were full and red, the deep red of a rose's heart, or of the good Finnish red wine her father kept in the under-cellar; he said he was saving it for her wedding-day. _

_Her wedding-day! She had hopes that day would soon come, King George's edicts or no. Good King George II, the titular monarch, she had decided, was a moron. "The man did nothing but ponder and plot a war with Spain for ten years," her father told her, "and then when he grew tired of that game, decided he'd give ruling a try." Having no practice at it, he was a miserable excuse for a monarch._

_However, he was the only one they had, so she had better get used to the things she couldn't change. The problem for her, personally, was this: she had fallen in love._

_Roarke had been a young, new-come lad in the town when she was a child; they had grown up good friends and playmates. When he was seventeen and she was fourteen, he left the village to sign up in King George's army—this was when War With Spain was still the Thing To Do. To the entire village's amazement, he had managed to become a cavalry officer in a relatively short time. His future was looking bright, and every time he visited his parents in the village, he'd make a special trip by the inn to see her, often clambering up to her window, as he'd done when they were small. He usually had some small trinket or other for her, and would oftentimes give her a little money for her to give to the poorest in the town—her sunny nature made 'a gift' out of what would usually be spurned as 'charity'; in this way, Roarke could quietly help those not so fortunate as he. _

_"But don't you want them to know of your generosity?" She'd asked him once._

_"I don't need _them_ to know. I only need for _you_ to know," he'd replied, with a slow sweet smile, and he kissed her hand, his deep brown—_red on black?—_deep brown eyes warm and intense. _

_Then King George had tired of playing at War With Spain, and decided to rule. He kicked out the man who had been ruling in his stead, Sir Robert Walpole, a year and a bit ago, and of course that left his army with little to do, and no means of supporting themselves or their families. Many banded into groups of brigands; a few, like her beloved Roarke, turned to highway robbery. Some of these few were in the robbery only to amass a fortune for themselves; others, like Roarke, were trying to be the counterweight to the brigands and robbers by robbing those who were rich or wealthy or sometimes simply too greedy or powerful to be left alone. One good scare was all most of them needed to learn to have pity on those less fortunate. Those who needed more than one or two scares—_

_—Well, they tended to not be a problem for too long, one way or the other._

_Bess was no fool, no; she knew Roarke was breaking the law, even if in a good cause. Highwaymen like him were hunted, good sport for the few Redcoat troops still maintained by the king. So after he was dismissed from the king's service, his visits to her had become by necessity more secretive. A little less money found its way to her hands to go to the poor, but he gave her a very small amount each time he visited to be saved away for their life together. _

_Her father silently kept track of the money Roarke left for Bess, hiding it in with the inn's own funds, lest his daughter be found with money she hadn't earned. He knew what was going on, of course; _he_ was no idiot. When he heard a man's voice in the inn, quiet in the night, and knew he had no boarders at the time, he knew whose voice it was, speaking so softly. _

_It was simply fortunate that he liked Roarke, always had, and would like him as a son-in-law very much (if he weren't currently a wanted man). David Dawson made no comment on his daughter's decidedly odd relationship with the man, and did not mention her infrequent nighttime visitor. He did not push her to marry any of the 'eligible' young bachelors of the village, either, though, so his silence on _all_ subjects marital was greatly appreciated by Bess. _

_Especially on a night like this, when Roarke was on a ride._

_She crouched by the window in her sitting-room, intently watching the road that crested the moor, listening intently for his horse's hoofbeats. _

What was _this_? Heavy bars across the window—?

_She shook her head. She mustn't let the moonlight trick her eyes. _

_Suddenly she froze, like a rabbit scenting the hunting-dogs: was it—no, it wasn't—yes, it—no—yes, yes it was, it _was _his horse, galloping to her as fast as he could._

_She rose, her rope of waist-length hair coiling around her, as she worked the intricate catch of the expensive casement window, and threw the panes wide. _

_Roarke's horse, black as ebony, entered through the gate in the front of the inn. Each step on the smooth cobbles echoed and re-echoed off the inn walls. The horse paused by the front of the house; she heard the flick of his riding-whip against the shutters at the front, a sure trick to spook anyone hiding into giving away their positions. Hearing no stir, he kicked his horse back into motion, guiding it along the inn-wall, whistling his 'all-clear' tune to her: "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair." _

_Hearing the familiar melody, she moved into the window, where he could see her waiting. He moved his horse beneath her window, and simply looked at her a moment, drank in the sight of her, which gave her a chance to look at him, in return. _

_She was clad only in her plain nightgown, yards of fabric gathered into a simple shift; he, in contrast, was dressed well, well enough to avoid suspicion by his victims until it was too late for them to run. A fancy, curved cocked-hat rested on his long, chestnut hair; a fine cambric shirt, covered in Brussels lace at throat and wrists, was overlaid by a fancy-coat of deep red plush velvet, "a red to match your lips," he'd told her. He'd stolen the coat a-purpose from one of his victims. High cavalry boots went halfway up his thigh. They kept the fine doeskin breeches she'd given him looking as new as possible; she'd saved all of her money from her crafts to buy them from a peddler, and he treasured the sacrifices of pretty ribbons and Spanish chocolates the breeches represented._

_"I've got a target pegged for midnight," he whispered up to her, his voice caressing in the night. "I've got to leave soon, but I couldn't go without seeing you again." He stood up in his stirrups, reaching his hand up to her. "Let me but feel your soft touch, my dearest, and I will fight through all the demons of hell to feel that touch again this night!"_

_She leaned over the windowsill, stretching her own small hand down to reach his; but the distance was too great, and only their fingertips brushed. She leaned a little further, desperate to touch him before he left, and the coil of her hair slid from behind her shoulder and poured down, reaching where her hands could not. _

_He sighed, and caressed her hair, which she had washed with herbs for him, hoping he wouldn't have a target picked this night…_

_He breathed in the scent of her hair, kissed it, then playfully tugged a strand, a longing look on his face. "Remember, my own dear 'Bessa, I'll come back to you before dawn, if I can. But if I cannot make it back by then, midnight tomorrow _will_ see me by your side, whether I have to fight devils or angels to get there, for you see—" his face shone with intensity in the bright moonlight "—you see, my own dearest one, if this ride goes as it should, it will be _the last one_. I can come back and live the rest of my time on God's earth in love with you."_

_Her breath caught in her throat, and before she could get it back to speak, he turned his horse toward the westward moor, and was off._

_She sighed, once, to herself, and closed the window, dreamily moving off to her bed._

_She never noticed the 'ostler, Tim, creep round the corner of the inn, where he had been crouched, watching, burning with jealousy and anger. She never saw him go running off into the night—straight for the nearest garrison of King George's men, Roarke's former fellow-soldiers._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Review Responses:**

**Eileen B.—** Hey there! Glad to see you're alive, lol. And, yes, it –is- something that would make Mulder launch into a big theory speech—_or is it?_ Dunh, dunh, DUN! And YOU update soon! Or else!

**Cat2fat900—**LOL. I actually don't despise Scott and Jean, but they're just so much _fun_ to bash.. Glad you appreciated it. And, yes, Logan-threats are always enjoyable. Oh—you loved Kurt, Bobby, and Remy's song? It took me thirty minutes to come up with that drivel! It's good to know the time was well-spent. :)

**catti—**Heeeeey…. I _knew_ something looked funny about that, but I couldn't place it! Thanks so much—that's been corrected now!

**ishandahalf—**Ish! Yes, bar scenes are always fun. I think its 'cos of those old film noir scenes in the bar, with the hazy lighting and cig smoke, you –knew- something nifty or dramatic was going to happen… yes, you and Cat2fat900 both are rocking out on the whole, 'you're skeptical about ghosts GUARANTEES you're seeing one soon!' thing. Love Murphy's Law, don't you? I've been on haunted tavern tours actually, they're entertaining. And there's an inn I have to be careful going in to—one of the ghosts there is eternally PO'ed, like, he makes blood cover the walls and ceiling and everything… Well, HE has it in for Irish-descended women… Yay me, right:) Ahh, I'm glad to know someone likes Old Robert, he's somewhat based off this old Scots-border college professor from England with whom I had several pints of Guinness last winter… And glad to know the old setup of 'we're broken down in the middle of nowhere with no supplies' works…! So, please read and review!

**PeaceBeyondtheDoor—**No, I really _did_ have to rewrite the first chapter, your comment made me look at it again and I thank you :) I made you laugh out loud? Really? Where? And of course there's a wee bit o' drinking, they're young Americans of legal age in another country… :) Glad you liked it, let me know what else you like (or dislike)!

**RebelRogue127—**Woot a new reviewer! No, it's no relative of Casper… the ghosts in this story are quasi-friendly at best, I think. And you picked up on mysteriousness in Old Robert's village… good eye! Let me know what you think of this one!


	4. Deep Nights Past and Present

Sorry about the long long loooooong delay in between updates… and _yes_ I am still working on "Xanadu," however Real Life does get in the way. So does losing the only paper draught of the next chapter of Xanadu (I was writing at work in my notebook)… so here's a bit of "Black is the Color" instead. :) Some more ghosts, just past Hallowe'en! As always, please review & let me know what you think—good or bad, but I do ask if you _particularly_ like or dislike something, let me know what that is. Thanks!

Enjoy!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Black is the Color **

Chapter 4. Deep Nights Past and Present

"Like, Rogue, are you all right?" Kitty Pryde asked her friend in shock the next morning. The Southerner looked like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep at all, as though she'd stayed awake half the night.

"I had a strange dream, that's all," Rogue replied shortly, and moved past Kitty to peer out the window at the sleet and snow still falling outside. "Geez. Has this let up at _all?"_

"Like, I don't think so. Want some coffee? You, like, _totally_ have to tell me about your dream," Kitty demanded, planting herself firmly beside Rogue, two mugs in her hands.

"Hm? Oh, thanks. Well, I don't remember it all that well, actually," Rogue disclaimed herself, then continued, "Well… it was strange. It was one of those dreams where you aren't _you,_ if you know what I mean.

"It must be this place getting to me or something. I was living here, in this inn, and there was a guy who'd ride his horse to see me here…. That's all I really remember, but I _know_ there was more to it than that…"

"A guy coming up on horseback to see you?" Kitty squealed. "Ooh… that's _so,_ like, _Princess Bride!"_

Rogue snorted. "You _would_ say that," she grumbled good-naturedly, and smiled as Remy entered the kitchen. "Morning, Cajun." She sipped her coffee, and remarked, "Don't look outside."

"Why, what's outside, _che—" _he cut himself off as, of course, he looked out the window. "Oh. _More_ snow."

"Tolja not to look."

"_Cherrrrrrrrre…"_ he groaned, "Why do y' torture your poor Cajun so? You _know_ telling me not t'look would make me look."

"Why? Because it's fun," Rogue replied matter-of-factly.

"Like, _duh,"_ Kitty added helpfully, grinning. "Want some coffee?"

The young man sighed, looked from devious girl to devious girl, and capitulated. "Sure. Coffee. T'anks."

The three young mutants sipped their coffee and debated the extent to which Scott and Jean were freaking out at "losing" half the X-men. "Scott's going crazier," Remy opined. "He's got de biggest stick up his—"

"Don't finish that sentence, Gumbo," Wolverine advised gruffly from the doorway, where he was stamping snow off of his boots. "Well, kids, it looks like we're snowed in here for a few days, at least. I managed to get a short message through to Storm by walking a few miles to a hill where the communicator would work, so they won't be worried, but apparently this weather is just going to sit here a while. It's bad enough that the Blackbird won't even be able to get through for four days at least, and that _only_ if necessary."

"So… why tell us this?" Kitty asked.

Wolverine grinned ferally. "Well, Rogue, the Cajun, and Colossus are the next most senior when Red and Scooter aren't around… and they're not here. So you get to figure out something to do with everyone for the next coupla days."

"Logan—what—but—Aren't _you_ in charge?" Rogue protested.

"I'm delegating authority while I spend some time with the locals."

"Doin' what, _homme?"_

"Playing backgammon," came the surprising answer. "Always liked that game, and it seems the locals are willing to wager on a tournament. See you all tonight. Try to not damage the historical inn." With that, he grinned (evilly, Rogue thought) and left.

"Well." Kitty said. "What now?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

An hour later they had gotten nearly everyone to join in on a game of Mutant Snowball Fight in the sheltered courtyard of the inn. Rogue couldn't suppress the atavistic tremor—of fear, or excitement?—that ran through her at the too-familiar angles and planes of the yard. _I wish I could remember that dream…I wish I knew how I remember this place..._ She thought, just before an ice ball came flying at her head. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice.

She _did_ notice, however, when Remy roughly pulled her to the icy ground, scolding, "_Cherie,_ now, don' you go getting yourself hurt. You want Remy to pamper you, dere's better ways o' getting him to do it than by getting yourself a concussion." He smirked suggestively at her, only inches away—_inches away? Wasn't he five feet below her window a moment ago—? And where had the snow come from…_

"_Chere_? _Chere_!" A voice was calling her, sounding as though it were being cried across a great distance.

"Roarke?" She mouthed, but no sound issued from her lips, and breathing seemed to be difficult, requiring concentration. Sparks danced in front of her eyes as the scenery seemed to flicker from sunlit snow to dark fall night, and Roarke's moonlit features switched intermittently to those of a young sharp-faced man with the _strangest_ eyes...

A shock of _cold_ on Rogue's belly shocked her into awareness. Her entire body jerked in reaction, and she instinctively squirmed, trying to get away. She blinked up at Remy, who was leaning over her, kneeling in the snow, a handful of the icy stuff in one hand while the other gripped the hem of her coat, preparatory to cold-shocking her again. His eyes were wide with concern as he looked down at her; past his shoulder, she could see that the others continued to snowfight, oblivious to the pair by the wall. "_Chere_," he asked cautiously. "Are you all right?"

"Remy?" She asked guardedly, "What…happened?"

"Was hoping you could tell me, _chere_. All I know is, you were staring out at the fields out there and didn't see one o' Iceboy's snowballs coming at you, I pulled you out o' de way, and as soon as you hit de ground here you… went away… 'til I got you with de snow."

Woozily, Rogue sat up, shaking ice and snow from her hair. "I dunno, Cajun… I guess maybe the combination of too little sleep and too much cold isn't good for us delicate Southern gals," she joked weakly. At his look of concern, she said more sturdily, "Look, I'm sure that's all it was. After all, this morning I only had some coffee; I haven't eaten anything all day. I'm sure that's all it was." She smiled reassuringly.

"Well, if you're sure, _chere_," he reluctantly agreed. At her emphatic nod, he continued, "Well, I t'ink you should get back inside in any case. Don't want you going face-down in any snowdrifts without Remy dere to rescue you," he winked, a bit of his normal cockiness coming through after his scare.

"Yeah, wouldn't want you to miss out on a chance like _that_," she replied, and allowed him to lead her back into the inn as the rest of the group continued their sport.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Do I tell de Wolverine, or no?" Remy muttered to himself, after seeing Rogue safely placed in the kitchen, where a roaring fire was drying her out. He stood in the front room of the old inn, which was rapidly becoming all too familiar to his sight. "On de one hand, her mutation might be out o' control, and de Wolverine might need to get help. On de ot'er hand, she insists there's nothing wrong, and if I get Wolverine involved without her permission, de _femme_ will kill me." He blew his breath out sharply as he thought. "Well, I'll give it a couple o' days more, and if she's not better, I'll insist _she_ talk with him." He brightened at a thought. "And dat means I'll be out of the range o' fire of both of them!" The thought made him much more cheerful, and he whistled as he went to round up the snowfighting mutants for dinner.

He didn't notice Rogue sit bolt upright, face white, as he passed by the kitchen door. "Remy?" She called out. He paused.

"_Oui, ma chere?"_ he asked.

"What's that tune you're whistling? Do you know the name?"

"Well, no, _chere,_" he replied, surprised. "Actually, I don't. It's a nice tune, though, isn't it? I t'ink I heard it in the village earlier, or something... Hold on—I'll be back in a minute, with de rest of de kids." He said, and disappeared outside. Inside, Rogue suppressed a shiver: the song he had whistled was the same tune Roarke had whistled in her dreams.

She was very quiet at dinner that night, and went to bed early.

Kitty, Kurt, and Remy sat up before the fire downstairs, talking about her worrying behavior for a long time before they, too, went to sleep. Remy didn't tell them about the incident in the snow, however; obviously, his friends already had enough to be worried over as far as Rogue was concerned, without him adding to it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Remy fell asleep unnaturally quickly, and swiftly moved into a bewildering kaleidoscope of images, sounds, tastes, much like those Rogue had described to him from her dreams. He woke several times, cursing himself for paying such close attention to the dreams that he himself started dreaming them… _OK. Get up, walk around a little, think of something _else_ to dream about,_ he told himself, and quietly did so, so as not to disturb Piotr across the room. What should he dream about? Hmm. Well, Rogue, of course, but not like she'd been recently, not like this afternoon when she lay in the snow blinking up at him, as though she had never seen him before—

—_She lay in the snow blinking up at him, as though wondering _how_ she had gotten there, her long, dark braids an inky halo around her head. Laughing, he picked up his lovely Bess, kissing her on the way upright. The late sun glinted off the icy crust on the ground, and her breath puffed out white as she laughed in his arms, only half-heartedly trying to get free. She whooped when he suddenly threw her over his broad shoulder, and she gasped out, still laughing, "Roarke, love, _what _are you doing?"_

_"Well, I've captured myself a bonny girl, and I've a mind to enjoy the spoils of war," he replied, ignoring the fact that she was speaking to his back. He headed for the inn door, and she struck him between the shoulder blades. _

_"You are _not_ carrying me into my own father's inn like this!" she said. "No no no no… You can't!"_

_"Oh, can't I?" He asked archly, and picked up the pace._

_"Oh, Roarke, dear, don't tease me," she begged, still giggling. "I'll never live it down. Please?"_

_"Oh, all right," he said grudgingly, and flipped her back into his arms. "I suppose carrying you in the conventional way will have to do,"_

_"Roarke! You cannot carry me any way into the inn, conventionally or no!"_

_He looked down at her, in amused surprise. "Can I not? No one is there; this storm last night stopped all travel. Only your father is in the inn, and he knows I'm here already. What difference does it make?"_

_She snorted a laugh, defeated by his logic, such as it was, and ducked against his broad shoulder as he walked into the inn's warm interior._

_Fifteen minutes later they were in her room, wringing the water out of their clothes and hair and trying to dry themselves before her small hearth. As he removed his soaked shirt, he turned to her bright face in time to see those endlessly deep eyes become round with shock, and hear a gasp escape her lips._

_"Roarke! Whatever were you thinking of, to carry me around with a gash like that?"_

_"Hm?" He glanced to where her gaze was fixed; a cut the length of his hand rippled over his ribs. "Oh, that. It looks worse than it is, really."_

_"'It looks worse than it is, really,'" she mocked, and glared at him. "That needs bandaging. Stay here," and she bustled off to find medicaments and wrapping. In a short time she was back, and he tolerantly let her minister to the cut—which really _wasn't_ all that bad, but wouldn't be hurt by her bandaging it, either. Plus, it gave him the excuse to enjoy the feel of her soft hands on him…_

_The second she was finished bandaging his ribs, he pulled her onto his lap, where she giggled and squirmed until he started kissing her. Kissing her thoroughly. _Deeply_ and thoroughly, and when he stopped kissing her, she gasped a breath and dove back at his lips. Chuckling, he leaned back until they reclined on her bed, and wrapped his arms around her small waist as she covered his face with kisses. Suddenly, she froze, eyes wide. He raised his head, startled._

_ "Oh, Lord!" She said, "Roarke, I'm sorry! I forgot about that gash—" She moved to get off of him, but he pulled her down and rolled to the side, his weight over—but not on—her. _

_"What gash?" he murmured into her throat, and she shivered, her eyes half-closing in pleasure at the burr of his lips against her skin. Gently, his hands joined his mouth on her, and a while later he was almost sure she muttered, "Ah, yes. What gash?"_

_He couldn't be certain, after, whether he really heard it or not, since then her own questing fingers found his skin, and drove all thought of speaking from both their minds._

—Remy awoke, sweat-soaked, half-aroused by a dream he only half-remembered, a dream of warm lips and a soft touch… His pulse pounded uncomfortably in his temples... and elsewhere. _I'll never get back to sleep like this,_ he thought, _and just when I have a dream I _really _want to go back to... _He let his mind wander aimlessly for a while, trying to capture the fleeting pieces of the unusually erotic dream he'd just experienced. He was shocked wide awake, as effectively as a cold shower, however, when a sharp, short cry rang out in the night: Rogue.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

_Bess knelt by her window, trying not to fidget. The sun was only just setting, true, and there was plenty of time left for Roarke to arrive, yet… She was worried. True, last night, when he left on this final ride, he had said he might not make it back 'til moonrise, and not to worry. Yet worry she did, for all that; he had promised to try to get back to her as soon as possible after he'd finished this last act of robbery—he had as much as said he'd be back by sunrise! And here it was, sunset, a full day gone by, and no word. Well. _She shook herself. _She shouldn't worry; hadn't he said to her, "…midnight tomorrow _will_ see me by your side, whether I have to fight devils or angels to get there…"? And so far she'd heard no word of angelic or demonic warring in the area. She shouldn't worry. What she _should_ do was go downstairs and help her father with the few customers in the inn… But what she really _wanted_ to do was stay here to be waiting for Roarke the second he returned. Sighing to herself, she turned, left her room, and began descending the narrow staircase. _

_She had barely reached the ground floor when the inn's heavy front door was thrown open with a crash, heedless of her father's stifled shout of outrage: stifled, because who walked in the front door but Commander Snythe, head of the local troop of those Redcoats still nominally employed by King George. Bess was startled to see their 'ostler, Tim, (who always tried to grope her when her father wasn't around) scuttling in behind the sub-commanders: What was _he _doing here? _

_She found out soon enough._

_"Innkeeper Dawson!" Snythe boomed, striding toward her father. Those standing nearest him quickly moved away, and Bess couldn't blame them: Snythe stood a full head taller than most men of the village, and had a brawny, heavy fist, and the temper to match. No one got in his way; one simply tried to keep oneself whole to patch up those unlucky enough to be on his bad side._

_"Innkeeper Dawson," Snythe repeated, more softly this time, but no less intimidating. "I have it on good authority that you have been known to harbor a fugitive, a thief, that infamously wanted highwayman Colin Roarke, here at your inn. What have you to say for yourself?"_

_"Well," her father returned calmly, with never a glance in her direction, "I'd be wanting to know who's been saying such things, that's what. Who's to say it's not some rival innkeeper spreading lies?"_

_Snythe's thin lips tightened beneath his moustache. "_I'm_ to say, that's who!" He returned, and continued, "Furthermore, I have it on equally good authority that the miscreant is expected back here soon—tonight, in fact." He smiled nastily. "And don't tell me you never knew who your daughter's lover was." His eyes were small and cruel in his face.  
_

_At that, Bess started to silently edge up the stairs, breath caught in her throat, as her father snapped, "Leave my daughter alone! She's no concern of yours."_

_"Ah, but, Innkeeper Dawson, she _is_ my concern, you see," Commander Snythe replied smoothly. "It's certainly not for your beer that the outlaw is coming tonight." He gestured shortly to two of his lieutenants, and they headed purposefully toward the stairs. He turned as his men dragged Bess from where she'd been trying to make her way up the stairs. They carried her pinioned by the arms between them, and she kicked at their heavy boots to no avail as Snythe continued speaking. "I'm afraid, Innkeeper, that your inn has just become a temporary garrison for myself and my men, while we work to preserve the King's justice—"_

_"Justice!" Bess spat. "You call it justice, filling your pockets with the bread of the poor; _justice, _that you hunt down a man who only wishes to restore some balance and grant some Christian mercy to the lowly—"_

_She yelped as Snythe's open-handed slap caught her full across the face, a heavy enough blow that she was nearly knocked from her captors' strong grips. He gripped her jaw and growled into her face, "Justice is whatever I say it is, Mistress Bess, and tonight you will aid me in delivering justice to that upstart young man of yours; he's made himself worth a pretty penny to the king." Before she could reply, he curtly ordered, "Gag her; we don't need a woman's screaming to warn the bandit."_

_He turned to Tim, who lurked nearby the door, looking nervous as a hare at a hunt from the look David Dawson was giving him. "You there!" Snythe said sharply, and Tim jumped as though he'd been struck. "Where does he usually meet her?"_

_"In her own bedchamber, sir," Tim sniveled, his greedy eyes flicking over Bess and back to Snythe. He, obviously, was the redcoat commander's source of information. _

_"In her own bedchamber," Snythe repeated thoughtfully, and nodded, a cruel smile crossing his face. "Well, men, take her there then. But don't mar her looks too badly, we do want her dearest Roarke to recognize her." The men holding Bess exchanged hard looks, and proceeded to drag her struggling form up the stairs, her shouts muffled by the rough gag in her mouth. Before she was pulled around the last corner, she saw her father, outraged, take a swing at Snythe, only to be cold-cocked by a soldier standing nearby. David fell like a bag of stones to the inn's floor, and did not move. Then she was around the corner, and could see her father no more._

_When they arrived in her bedchamber, Bess could only mournfully think that the splendid sunset was mocking her, as it washed her room in a blood-red light. Quickly, the pair of men tied her to the upright foot-posts of her narrow bed, so that she had a clear view of the moors and the road leading to the inn: the path Roarke always rode. _

_She continued to struggle and fight as best she could, avoiding the men's pinching, groping hands, but stilled in abject fear when Snythe's heavy bootsteps entered the room: her cheek still stung from his earlier slap._

_"Now, then, what's this?" he asked, mock-surprised, as the sun slowly slid beneath the horizon behind him. "Why, it's almost night, Bess, and you're nowhere nearly ready for bed, are you? No." He considered her for a moment, then began studiously unlacing her overdress and outer garments, stopping when she was clad only in her shift, which reached only to her knees. She shivered under Snythe's gaze and fought not to flinch as he put his arms around her and loosed the cascade of her hair, arranging the waves to fall over her shoulders and down her back in a sea of blackness. He left one hand resting on her waist, surprisingly gentle, and his other hand lifted toward her face and—_

_To her utter surprise, he __pulled the gag from her mouth. Immediately, she took breath to begin screaming, cursing him, anything to alert other villagers at least, but before she could get a sound out, his hand struck her face again—the other side this time—and the hand that had been at her waist delivered a short, sharp blow to her belly, knocking all the breath from her. It _hurt,_ and while she was trying to convince her lungs to re-expand, he kissed her, roughly, deeply, with a menace and a feral hunger she had never experienced with Roarke. It crossed her mind that she could have lived happily without the experience, when the hand not gripping her head moved suddenly to just under her breast—_

_—_Rogue awoke, shaking, her cry of purest fear echoing from the ceiling, a bolt of terror coursing through her. _My God._ Images from the dream assaulted her mind, and she sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. She looked up, startled, when Remy burst through the door, covered in sweat, his hair disheveled.

"I don't think, anymore, that these are just dreams," she said quietly, fighting to keep her vioce from shaking.

"I agree." Remy said, releasing a shaky breath. "I am so sorry I half-shrugged them off, earlier, _chere..._ I just had one of 'em myself."

She shivered at that news, closing her eyes in half-despair, and at last asked, "Remy? What's going on?" Her voice was thick sounding.

"I dunno, _chere." _He said, and sat on the bed and put his arms around her."I really don't know." Weakly, she leaned against him, sagging into his loose embrace.

Dawn found them sitting on her bed in that pose, statue-like, eyes wide and bloodshot, and fearing what the next night might bring.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Review Responses:**

**Ishandahalf—**Ish! Hope you're still reading this, I'm so bad for updating… geeze…

Haha. Yeah… the "Cajun GQ" line just jumped into my head, I HAD to use it… Thanks for reading/reviewing… please do so again! (Even tho' I took a freakin month to update…)  
**PeaceBeyondtheDoor—**Are you ecstatic enough to review again:) Thanks for reading.

**Weirdlet—**Thanks for reviewing… Please do so again! Let me know what you think of the story... please?  
**Lady MR1—**Oh yes but I DID write a fanfic based on "The Highwayman." But look who's reading it! LOL. Anyway, thanks for reviewing… Hey, I hear it's even MORE fun the -n-th time reviewing…  
**Cat2fat900—**Glad you liked the Rogue-threatening-Remy-in-the-rain bit… LOL. Geez. Robert seems to be creeping people out the most, hm… Anyway, R&R!  
**A.M.bookwrm247—**"Interesting," you say? You haven't seen "interesting" yet! Not even in Chapter 4! Well, not really… Please read and review. And if you feel like tossing some theories about, feel free… we'll see how close you are:)

**FluidDegree—**So glad you like the story! Hope the spookiness increased with this chapter… yep, Remy's being sucked in too. Muahahaha! Please read and review!  
**Sakura5star—**Thanks for reviewing… please do so again! And, lol. If I ever get the plot thick enough I –was- actually considering a non-fanfic rewrite and submitting it to some publisher… I suppose we'll see…


	5. Past and Present—Remix

Eeek! (Hides). It's been more than a year since I've updated this?!? BAAAAAD ME. My main problem is I will write something, then go back and reread it a while later, and go, "Naaah. That doesn't work," and delete and re-write. sighs Stupid writers' block. Anyway, keep an eye out for authors' notes since I may be changing or adjusting the previous chapters a bit to make the story smoother. Sorry again about the distinct lack of update here… --Alara

Oh, for the record, the poem is "The Highwayman," and it was written by Alfred Noyce.

And BTW, one cannot ride a horse quickly across a moor (really one oughtn't ride _at all_ across a moor) because typically they're very marshy and boggy, etc. and tend to break horses' legs or swallow them whole. But I needed Roarke to be able to ride his horse quickly across the moor—so, some artistic license there… don't try this at home, kids. :)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Black is the Color **

Chapter 5.

About an hour after dawn, Rogue fell asleep leaning just a little bit against Remy, much to his bemusement; he eased her down to the bed, and sat himself against the headboard, watching her. Almost against his will, he found himself growing heavy-headed, despite his worry over Rogue's condition. He, too, fell asleep, and this time was so exhausted he did not dream.

He didn't enjoy the rest for long, though.

He was awakened by Logan's frightening growl when he found Remy in Rogue's room—sitting on her bed, no less. In a somewhat backhanded turn of fortune, however, he wasn't in trouble for long. It appeared that Rogue's soak in the snow the day before had caused her to become somewhat ill; before Logan could accuse Remy of any inappropriate behavior, Rogue began to cough violently in her sleep, deep, racking coughs that simply _sounded_ painful.

In an instant, Remy was glibly lying to Logan, saying her coughs in the night had awakened him, and he came to her room to be sure she was all right, but found her feverish and ill, and so stayed with her, but then of course hadn't _he_ accidentally fallen asleep, and _obviously_ nothing was going on, they both had their clothes on didn't they, and besides, Rogue was still sick so shouldn't they do something about _that_?

He decided that between "Rogue is sick" and "Rogue and now apparently me, too, we're re-living some people's lives in our sleep only we can't remember the dreams properly and so have no idea _why_ we're having them, but from the great dream I had last night, I think they were getting it on together but I'm not sure since haven't talked with her about that yet," the first was _slightly_ more believable, and was far less likely to get him in deep trouble with Logan.

Logan simply snorted, and left the room, muttering something about "I'll be back, so watch yourself." Remy, nonplussed, wasn't sure whether he left to get away from his rambling explanation or to get help for Rogue; in either case, he was out of the room, which was all Remy wanted.

"_Chere?" _He shook Rogue's shoulder, trying not to notice how pale and cool-skinned she was. "It's morning, _chere._ Time to be up. We really need to talk about what's going on."

Her eyelids fluttered slightly, and her mouth moved. "Ruh…" she breathed out, then was still again.

"C'mon, _chere_, got to get you up. Not good to be lying flat with a cold in your chest. Rogue…" He shook her shoulder again, a bit more strongly this time, and was rewarded with her eyes—did they look darker than usual? Her eyes blinked open, and slowly focused on him.

Her hoarse words—not to mention her accent!—startled him, however.   
"Roarke, my love, so you _are_ here. I thought I'd heard your voice…"

"_Chere?"_ Remy said slowly, concerned.

She chuckled, weakly. "French, today, is it, dear? _Por quois?"_ She laughed again at her own weak joke, and fell into a coughing fit. "Oh, I am indeed ill, aren't I? I'm so sorry to have ruined your visit." Her voice was weak, and he had to lean forward to hear her. "Help me sit up, would you? And I must tell you about the strange dream I had about us, dear…"

He nodded, not trusting himself to say anything at the moment. She was speaking like—like Old Robert, or someone from the town! A British accent, not her own lovely mellow Southern. And obviously she thought _he_ was someone else—but wasn't that name, _Roarke,_ wasn't that the tiniest bit familiar to him? Had she mentioned it to him before? _Why_ couldn't he remember the dream he'd had last night?

He shook himself, and helped her to sit up against the headboard—but she promptly cuddled herself against his side. He hoped she hadn't seen his wide-eyed, startled glance. _His _Rogue didn't…_cuddle._ _This is just getting creepy now,_ he thought, looking down at her, now peacefully falling into sleep again, one arm curled almost uncomfortably high around his thigh. And strange as _that_ was, the sensation went through him that her arm around him, her head tucked against his ribcage, it seemed that _those_ feelings _should _be familiar to him, but were not. He was feeling like he didn't fit in his body, or that his body didn't fit the things his mind was telling him should be common, easy. It was a _very _strange sensation, and he busied himself with checking on Rogue. Already, her breath seemed to be easier, and there definitely was more color in her face.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Rogue started awake a short while later, going abruptly from foggy dreams to wakefulness. She blinked sleepily a few times, then realized that the pillow she was lying curled against was… _moving._ Slightly, yes, but definitely _moving. _

_Pillows don't move. Am I still dreaming?_

_All right, _enough_ with these freaky dreams already._ She yawned, and raised her head abruptly when she inhaled Remy's musky scent of cologne and spices. She blinked a few times, and realized that the 'pillow' she'd been lying against was actually Remy himself, and that her arm was tucked around his leg, _far_ too close to parts of _him_ that no part of _her_ should be close to.

_Especially_ not when they were sitting on her bed.

Swiftly she untangled herself, sat upright, and punched him as hard as she could in aforementioned thigh.

"Ow!" he said reflexively, but instead of the "What was _dat_ for, _cherie?" _that she was expecting, he said, pale-faced, "I've never been so glad to get hit in m' life, _cherie._ What's my name?"

She gave him a look. "Cajun, you drunk or something? You're Remy."

He released a pent-up breath. "_Dieu,_ t'ank y'. You're back."

That required a moment of thought.

"Ah… where was I?"

"Damned if _I _know! Y' called me by de name of Roarke, though. Should I be jealous, _chere_?" He made the joke without smiling.

Rogue felt dizzy. "I called you… w-what?" The name echoed in her head. She _hoped _she'd heard him incorrectly.

"Roarke. And 'love,' and 'dear,' and—you just plain _scared_ me, _chere!"_

_Crap. _It _was_ the name from her dreams. _"_And I did this while I was… awake?"

"Well, half-awake, maybe. How's your throat?"

"My throat?" she frowned, and swallowed. "It's sore—" she interrupted herself with another bout of coughs, and winced. "Ow. _That's_ why you were asking. It's just a little sore, but coughing is a bitch."

"Thought that might be so. You feel all right besides that?"

"I'm a little cold-feeling," she admitted reluctantly. He leaned over and touched the back of his hand to her cheek.

"_Chere,_ you're feverish!" he exclaimed. "And a few minutes ago, you were so cold I'd have sworn you were dead if you weren't breathing."

Slowly, she stated the obvious. "That's not supposed to happen…" Shivering, she crowded down beneath the quilt, hugging her arms around herself. "Remy, what's going on around here? Why am I—why are _we_—having these freakish dreams?"

"I don't know," he admitted unhappily. "I'm going to go see what I can find out, though. You just stay here and get some sleep, _chere._ I'll see that no one disturbs you."

"Or hears me call you by another man's name again," Rogue added grimly, settling back against the pillow, her eyes concerned even as she closed them to sleep.

"Yeah. Or that." Was all the reply Remy could make to that, and left the room.

On his way downstairs, he met with Wolverine, who glared a question at him. "Easy, _homme. _She's sleeping—she's feverish and chilled, and sleep's the best for her right now. I was just going to get Kitty or someone to sit with her, in case she needs anything."

"And where are you off to?" Logan demanded gruffly. "You smell of flowers, Cajun; you seeing some local girlfriend?"

Apparently, Logan still harbored the belief that Remy really _did_ have a girl in _every_ town, despite his attachment to Rogue. The playboy assumption really annoyed Remy sometimes… like now.

"_Non,_ no girlfriend in this little town, unless you think I'm dating Kurt. He's got to help me with an errand for Rogue…_ if_ dat's okay by you, _Wolverine."_Remy said insolently. Logan growled at him in response, but moved aside to let him pass by, apparently satisfied with that explanation. Remy couldn't resist tossing over his shoulder, "Oh, and by the way… I was with Rogue half the night, so it'd be _her_ perfume you'd be smelling… didn't you know she does wear it sometimes? Guess you don't know her as well as you thought."

He heard Logan snarl as he walked away, seeking out Kitty and Kurt, who hopefully would help him sort out this supernatural mess. He decided not to mention to Wolverine that Rogue hadn't been wearing any of her perfume yesterday… but the woman in his dream had been scented with herbs… and wild roses.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He found Kurt, Kitty, Amanda, and Amara sitting together in the main room of the inn, playing a game together. A brief word got Kurt and Kitty to come aside with him, and he worriedly explained the events of the morning to them.

"We've got to tell Wolverine what's going on," Kitty said anxiously. "I think this whole thing is way over our heads."

"Do you think it's just her new mutation acting up? Reacting to the inn?" Remy asked anxiously. "Maybe just leaving will fix it."

Kurt shook his head slowly. "_Nein_, we cannot assume it is ze place alone—at least here ve are pretty isolated if her mutation acts up severely. Zhere are not too many people to be hurt. In any case, vhether it's her new mutation acting up, or something else altogether, ze Prof is the only one who would be able to figure it out. We _have_ to have Wolverine go get him."

Remy sighed, defeated by Kurt's logic. "Remy 'most always willing to admit when someone's right," he shrugged. "But could you two help me figure out what happened here a couple hundred years ago?" He shook his head. "_Something _did, and maybe if we knew what that was, we could get Rogue free of whatever it is that's influencing her. And me," he added as an afterthought.

"'And you'?!" Kitty exclaimed, grabbing his arm. "Are you saying you've had the same dreams as Rogue?"

"_Non." _At her look, he amended, "Well, not exactly. They are connected, though. Some things she said this morning matched with what I dreamed last night, but I hadn't had the chance to tell her about it yet."

"That seals it, then." Kitty said firmly. "First, we'll try to find out from the locals if anything significant ever happened here, but then we're telling Mr. Logan what's going on."

"Agreed." Kurt seconded it, and added, "Amanda and I can go left of the inn, and you and Kitty go right. That way we can try to talk to as many people as possible. Let's meet up here at four, and see what we've found, all right?"

Nods all around. Fifteen minutes later, as they started off through the snow, Kitty bumped him with her shoulder. "Hey… it'll turn out all right, you know? Professor Xavier will be able to help, I'm sure of it."

Remy could only muster a halfhearted smile in reply.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

By five pm, the foursome were footsore and tired, but satisfied at how well their notes matched up. It seemed that around 250 years ago, there had been a notorious, Robin-Hood-like highwayman in the area. Nothing new, as so many other inns they'd been to boasted robbers' visits.

What was different about this one was that every person they'd spoken to mentioned a tragic end to the highwayman's career—he'd been double-crossed. Some said a friend did it to gain wealth, some said a townsperson turned him in for his robbing, however selfless. A very few said it was his lover, the local beauty, who betrayed him—but no one could give a good reason for her doing so, since she would have gained nothing by giving him up to the authorities. The women of the village said that like as not it was the jealous, plainer, mean-spirited girls back then who spread the (most likely false) rumor of the girl's treachery. But then again, _that_ version had been told almost as long as the others—so it was part of the local lore about the inn.

Everyone also admitted upfront that the place was said to be haunted, most likely by the ghosts of those events of long ago. A middle-aged man had mentioned that before the heavy metal bars were placed over the windows, the upper-floor windows would often be found flung wide open, regardless of season—highly unusual, since the window's locks were heavy, metal, and intricate; they required a person to actually unlock them. Also, any piece of modern furniture that was brought into the inn would shortly somehow find its way outside the inn walls overnight—even those pieces that had required a team of men to move them _into_ the inn originally. Bizarrely, the only exception to that rule was the mattresses: apparently the ghosts or whatever had to agree that mattresses, at least, had improved since the 1700s, and were therefore allowed to stay. The inn's owners had heaved a sigh of relief when the bedding, at least, stayed put, even if nothing else would.

For the rest of the mysteriously mobile furniture, the managers of the inn finally threw up their hands in exasperation, and prevailed upon the local craftspeople to make and repair the furnishings for the inn, which helped the locals by giving them work, and gave the inn the ability to market the "genuine 18th century/local handmade furnishings" in their advertisements.

Another thing the inn was fond of advertising was that the inn had been continually in use since its establishment in 1729, except for a few months in the winter of 1751, when the innkeeper's daughter—possibly the same one who was involved with the highwayman, but no one knew for sure—the innkeeper's daughter had been murdered. The man had left in his grief to stay with relatives for a short while, closing the inn while he was away, but in the spring he came back and never left the inn again. He maintained 'til his death that his daughter was still in the inn, which everyone dismissed as a harmless, hopeless fantasy.

"Maybe not so crazy, after all," Kurt commented, when he heard this facet of the story. The others could only nod agreement.

"So, like, where's Mister Logan?" Kitty asked curiously, looking around the quiet living room. Piotr looked up from the Dostoyevsky he was reading. "Wolverine has gone to play the backgammon again," he said. "I am currently in charge. What is wrong?"

The trio sighed, exchanged glances, and proceeded to fill him in on what was going on. The Russian's expression was grave as they finished. "I know where he was going to play his games," he stated. "I shall go and bring him back here, then we can have him go and get the Professor."

"While you're doin' that, I'm going to go check on Rogue," Remy said, and vanished upstairs.

Kitty looked worriedly at the clock: it was four-thirty. "Y'know, Kurt, it's getting awfully late, and it's getting dark. Do you think Mister Logan will go to get the Professor now?"

"I don't think we can afford to wait 'til tomorrow, Kitty," Kurt pointed out. "Rogue's dreams seem to be getting stronger every night, and she seems to be more and more lost in them when she wakes."

"And now Remy's having the same kind of dreams…" Kitty said slowly. "How long before we all are trapped here in dreaming?"

They exchanged wide-eyed looks, then hurried to catch up with Piotr. They had to find Logan, soon.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

While they were all out finding Logan and convincing him of the urgency of the strange situation, Remy went up and got Rogue to come downstairs and have some tea and some dinner. While eating, he told her everything they'd learned that afternoon about the inn's history. After eating, they sat at the broad table in the kitchen and played cards in silence for a while.

"I'm scared, Remy," Rogue said suddenly. "I have the feeling that something big is coming with this whole weird situation."

"Don't worry, _chere_, the others will get de Wolverine to go get the Professor, and he will come and find out exactly what is going wrong and fix it." Remy replied confidently. He added, "Besides, whatever happens, I will be right here with you. Scout's honor."

"You were never a Boy Scout."

"Picked enough o' deir pockets, though, I get honorary status; have all de badges t' prove it."

He got a laugh and a half-smile from that one, and counted it as a victory: She looked pale and drawn in the flickering candlelight. "You really mean it?" She said. "You'll be here?"  
"O' course," he replied. "Always." His red eyes glowed from across the table.

For that simple statement, he got a full smile and a kiss, which he returned gratefully. He pretended to be insulted when she yawned immediately.

"I dat boring, chere?" he laughed.

"No, no—" she yawned again—"No! Sorry. I'm just so damn tired… stupid cold."

"Well, it's—" he peered at his watch. "Just after eight. You want to go upstairs yet?"

She shivered. "No, not yet. Let's just sit by the fire for a while."

They did so, and slowly the minutes ticked by. Occasionally they'd talk about what was going on, and at other times they'd sit in comfortable silence, watching the flames dance and curl around each other.

It was half past nine when the others came in, explaining that it had taken them a while to find Logan, then a longer while to explain everything to him, then yet a longer while again to determine from the locals which direction was best for Logan to go in to find a town with a telephone—or at least a cell signal. The roads, apparently, were still flooded and/or iced over, so it would be a long hike across the moor for Wolverine.

"…So, like, Mister Logan said for us all to hang on 'til tomorrow, since that's the earliest the Professor can come, and he said he'll totally come _rightback_ when he gets through to the Prof. Okay?" Kitty eyed her friend worriedly as she delivered the message.

Rogue smiled wanly. "Well, I suppose I'll have to be, won't I?" Kitty looked stricken at the under-enthusiastic response. "Kit… I'll be _fine,_ I promise," she glanced at Remy, and smiled. "I'm well-looked after."

Kitty's expression cleared somewhat at that, and she suggested they all play a card game while she, Kurt, and Piotr got a late dinner.

This managed to eat up time until nearly ten-thirty, by which time Rogue was drowsing against Remy's shoulder. After jerking herself awake for the fifth time, she growled in aggravation. "That's it; I'm going to bed," she said. "Stupid cold… can't even stay awake 'til midnight…" the others heard her muttering as she shuffled off upstairs.

Kitty, Piotr, Kurt, and Remy sat for a few minutes, discussing what they thought the Professor might do to help Rogue, and what they might be able to do to assist him. When the conversation stalled out for the third time, though, Remy stood and began clearing things up. "Well, I t'ink I'm going to bed, too. Figure it's like Christmas when you were a kid; sooner y' go t' bed, sooner it's t'morrow." The others muttered agreement, each lost in their own worries for their so-loved teammate. It was a quiet group that tramped up the narrow staircase, and a quiet Remy who looked in on the peacefully sleeping Rogue before making his way to his own bed. Eventually he, too, fell asleep.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

However peaceful-seeming, Rogue's sleep was not restful. Shortly after Remy left her, a chill pervaded the room, and she shivered with cold and fear beneath the quilt on the bed. From the previous dream-experiences, her body knew what was coming, though her sleeping mind did not. Like leaping into a deep, cold lake on the hottest day of summer, she plunged into the dream—

_Dream? No, no dream, a terror, a nightmare! And would that it were merely a nightmare, but it was life after all, and crueler than Bess had yet experienced life to be. _

_Snythe was kissing her foully, forcing her lips apart, hands groping at her shift's hem, belt and musket stock digging sharply into her soft flesh where he leaned into her. She'd thought Tim's clumsy 'accidental' fumbling at her bodice or rear when she passed him to be horrible; now she knew they were like the scratch of a cat compared to the furious snapping of a mastiff. _

_The men-at-arms laughed and jostled each other and made crude suggestions to their commander as tears streamed from Bess' eyes, unable even the weapon of screaming as Snythe's mouth covered hers. _

_He stopped suddenly, slapping one hand over her mouth as he broke away, and the other hand fastening securely around her throat as he leaned toward the window and intently _listened.

_Her heart nearly stopped when she realized what he was listening for: hoofbeats. A gentle drumming, so faint, more felt than heard: Roarke was coming for her. _

_Snythe quickly tightened her bonds, her hands tied together, then each arm tied to the opposite bed-post besides, so she couldn't get free. He jerked the gag back into her mouth, knotting it in her long hair, so there was no chance she could force it out. He next unslung his long-barreled musket from his shoulder, and wedged the stock against the leg of the bed, the barrel digging into her breastbone. He took the opportunity to fondle her intimately as he settled the gun in place. His eyes promised that this would not be the last time he touched her so, as aloud he said, "This weapon is on a hair-trigger; even a small movement will set it off, so I suggest you do no more than breathe, Mistress Dawson. Therefore do attempt not to start too badly when I shoot that damned highwayman down in your yard. Keep watch for us, my sweet," and he turned to his men. "If she makes a move, slit her throat. We don't want to warn the bastard we're here."_

_The two Redcoats nodded their compliance, and settled in at either end of the window to wait. Snythe vanished through the door; she heard his heavy boots scuff their way down the staircase. _

_Bess heard the sound again, slightly more audible this time, like a pheasant's wings drumming the ground in panic: Roarke was coming. Couldn't he break a promise, just once? Must he always be so damned honorable? Please, God, _she prayed, _Lame his horse, strike the inn with lightning, shake the earth, only do not let him come here!_

_The hoofbeats continued, however, maddeningly even, though still faint and far away, and she smelled no smoke and the earth remained stubbornly solid. Apparently God was not listening to those sorts of prayers on this terrible night—and how could prayers get to heaven with so much evil around, anyway? _

_She had to do _something._ Something Snythe had said had caught on her memory, like a thread that snagged going through brambles—it caught, and was stretched out, but if she could only gather the thought in, it would be something worthwhile. He said… he said…_

_That was her one chance to save him._

_She began surreptitiously straining at the coarse ropes that bound her wrists together, glad now for the gag that kept her cries of pain silent; she felt the fibers slice her wrists like tiny knives, and the back of her gown quickly became spotted with red. She had to move her hands round to her side—the gun was her one opportunity. If she could get her hands to it…_

_It seemed to take eons to move her hands—slow enough that her 'guards' didn't notice, but fast enough that it would make a difference to Roarke's living or dying. She struggled silently, felt a shoulder, than an elbow dislocate painfully, but it made the difference: she was just millimeters away… _

_The hoof-beats rang out more clearly now: he was nearing the crest of the moor, from which it was a straight road down to the inn. They were actual, unmistakable hoofbeats too, reverberating off the inn wall, feeling like nails being driven into her heart. _

_Why did he always keep his promises?_

_She saw his form crest the moor and begin to swiftly descend; the men in her room raised their muskets to their shoulders and braced themselves for the first shots. Their attention was wholly focused on the descending rider and horse. They had forgotten she was in the room at all. _

_It was what she'd been waiting for._

_Up on the moor, the monastery bells began chiming midnight._

_Her finger stretched—a little further—a little further—_

_Her dislocated arm screamed at the movement, as her wrists and mouth bled more freely from the bonds carving into them._

_The hoofbeats now seemed to thrum, "Fare-thee-well, Fare-thee-well," and she felt the barest sensation of metal against her fingertip._

_It was enough. _

_She focused every ounce of will she had on that one finger, all pain, all fear falling away—_

_The fingertip moved, caught, and forced the trigger down with all its strength._

_The shot rang out like a trumpet, a warning cry with the only voice Bess had, shattering the night, and the figure on the hill abruptly wheeled and swiftly disappeared, only rising dust marking his passage. _

_Bess, for her part, felt an awesome heat, was suddenly aware of every particle of her being for one timeless instant—that final heave of her heart—_

_Then, rapid-closing darkness as the men at the window, shouting, leapt at her, seconds and an eternity too late to stop her._

_A great splash of blood was against the wall, the ceiling, spilling across the floor, dripping down her body like honey._

_She was beyond knowledge of this, her tormented shell empty._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Remy, for his part, was having a similarly tormented dream, wherein he was that same guy—Roarke—only this time, he was riding a horse. Remy didn't ride horses, Remy rode motorcycles. But not… not…

_Roarke patted the night-black mane of his horse, then kicked her into a faster gait, his full saddlebags jingling. He'd promised to be back with Bess tonight, and he'd won his prize and more besides, and he couldn't _wait_ to tell her all of his news… He urged the horse on faster, a dark streak across the moor. There was the monastery up ahead, and he could see the night watchman in his cowl begin the long ascent up to the bell-tower; it must be nearing midnight. He had to get to her. He'd _promised_ her, and he didn't break promises. Especially not to Bess. _

_He came over the moor's crest and began the careful descent, letting the horse pick its own way down, so long as it wasn't _slow._ He looked down at the inn, and was surprised to see that Bess didn't have a candle lit for him… and the shutters on the tavern part of the inn were still open and lit. Strange… perhaps there was a celebration going on in the village. But this late at night? He frowned, suspicious._

_He was nearly to the bottom when his horse perked up his ears and sent a soft whicker ahead of them. Roarke could see a group of four or five horses standing together, just to the right of the inn. One of them looked oddly familiar, a striking white horse with blonde mane and tail… Where did he know that from?_

_A shot rang out suddenly, and with that sound, he realized that the horse had been the favorite mount of one of the officers of the Redcoat troop he'd served with. It must be an ambush! Adrenaline coursing, he wrenched his horse's head around and galloped up the steep slope to safety over the crest of the moor. "Sorry, Bess," he said aloud. "This will be the last promise I break." He grinned, white teeth flashing in the moonlight. "…I promise." _

_He made a brief detour into the monastery—they knew him well there— to relieve himself of much of the weight of his saddlebags, then took off across the moor again to an alehouse on its far edge where he and other highwaymen often took refuge from King George's justice. _

_Upon arriving at the alehouse, he slapped two coins down on the counter and wordlessly rolled himself up in his cloak near the hearth to catch a few hours' sleep before venturing out to see if the hunt had been called off. He was woken with a hand shaking his shoulder roughly, and a half-familiar voice saying urgently, "Roarke? Roarke? Wake up, lad. There's news you need to hear." Blearily, he opened his eyes to see the house's owner, Ben, standing over him, prodding him awake. By the feel of it, he'd only been asleep for four hours or so; it must be near dawn._

_"Roarke. _Roarke. _Are you awake? You need to be awake," the man said. Roarke lazily climbed to his feet, muttering._

_Another fugitive from justice thrust a flask of whiskey into Roarke's hands, saying, "Take a swig o' that. It'll get you awake, and—and you'll be needing it, boyo." The man looked away quickly, before Roarke could ask him what he meant. _

_He looked around the alehouse, confused, and all around, men wouldn't meet his eyes, or swiftly doffed their caps. He looked back at Ben, whose face was compassionate. "Lad," he said, "It falls to me to be tellin' ye this, an' it's not a job I relish. Y'see, there's been a shooting. Over at Dawson's Inn, last night."_

_The tension went out of him, and Roarke laughed and waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, I know about _that_, I was there…" Muffled oaths went round the room as the others stared at him in something like horror. "They shot at me, but missed badly, and I managed to escape. There was no shooting, you've been misinformed."_

_Ben swallowed heavily, and shook his head. "No, lad, that's what I've got t' tell ye. There was a killing last night, there, at the Inn. T'was 'Bessa killed by them Redcoats."_

_The ground dropped out from beneath his feet. "No…" he shook his head. "That's not possible. It's—no. It was someone else." His face took on an ashen hue; he staggered back a few steps as though he'd been physically struck. The others caught him, kept him from falling. He felt his heart constrict, squeeze, stop for a second: he fell into blackness._

_He woke a few hours later to a much-unchanged scene. Many of the others were still sitting around, lending him the silent support of their presence during his time of sorrow. As soon as he sat up, the flask of whiskey was again folded into his hand, and this time, he drank deeply, barely feeling the burn of the alcohol when compared to the pain his very soul was feeling to know that she was…just gone. Stolen from him, like so many other things those damned Redcoats took from him. _

_The church bells in the town nearby tolled eleven o'clock. Eleven hours she'd been gone, and he'd been consciously aware of her loss for perhaps a total of five waking minutes._

_It was forever. _

_He could not possibly live like this. They couldn't expect him to. Certainly he could not live on the same Earth that her murderer lived on. Thanks to that white horse last night, he knew exactly who he was looking for: Snythe, a cruel, brutish commander who maintained his commission through threats, bribes, and blackmail. _

_Snythe, he vowed, would not live to see the sunset._

_He had been sitting so quietly, so despondently, since waking that it took everyone entirely by surprise when suddenly young Colin Roarke leapt up and headed straight out the door, picking up his pistols and sword as he went out. Everyone gaped at the empty doorway for a second, then scrambled after him: who knew what a man in his disturbed state of mind might do? _

_But he was already galloping away, shouting, shrieking at the top of his lungs, "God damn you to the darkest pits of Hell, Snythe, and may He grant mine be the hand to send you there!"_

_Ben, left alone in the alehouse, shook his head sadly. He'd seen things like this before, and it could only end badly._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

_His promise to himself notwithstanding, Roarke found Snythe far earlier than sunset—indeed, in less than an hour, Snythe's sulking command unit found itself upset by a raving, furious highwayman with madness in his eyes. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and killed two men on his way through the ranks to Snythe, who calmly drew his pistol, cocked it, aimed it, and fired at the onrushing madman. _

_He wasn't able, however, to duck the throwing knife Roarke expertly threw at him; as he fired the pistol, the point entered his eye and sank to the hilt. He was dead before he fell forward against his horse's neck._

_Roarke was knocked sideways out of his saddle with the impact of the shot. He struggled to get back on the horse—the injury wasn't immediately deadly._

_The next three, however, arriving more-or-less simultaneously, were. His last sight was of the burning sun standing directly overhead, as his blood dyed the Brussels lace and his legs twitched in those doeskin breeches his sweetheart had given so much to buy. _

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Remy came half-awake with a shudder, to find himself standing outside, in the cold, dressed in the fine clothes he'd been wearing in the dream—_Was it a dream? No, it wasn't, it had _been_ a terrible, terrible nightmare, but if he walked along the inn-wall, surely, surely it wasn't true, his Bess would be waiting there for him as always…_

Rogue was standing somehow _outside_ of those heavy metal bars as though they didn't exist at all, Rogue—_'Bessa dressed in that familiar fine long lace-edged nightgown, and_ _all her long black hair was twisted behind her, and she looked down at him as he strode up 'til he was just beneath her windows, his boot-nails clicking on the cobbles._

_As though by common accord she reached down to him the same moment he began to climb up, so that before he had come up very far her fingertips were sliding through his hair, urging him up faster. In a moment they were together, shivering in the cold night air, reveling in simply touching one another—_

Neither noticed the bloodstains on the other's clothing, nor her slashed wrists and tender mouth, nor the powder burns on their skins.

_"It's too cold," she said, "Let's go inside." He nodded, and opened his mouth to ask what about the metal bars—but he looked again and of course there were no metal bars, there never had been, what a silly thought. And then they were inside and her hands were urging his high boots down, off, _now_, and they weren't going on her bed—he threw them near the chair in the anteroom, and his long coat spilled its velvet length across its arms a moment later. Hopefully there were no guests wandering the inn; the boots in Bess's anteroom, visible from the hall, would be a dead giveaway that he was here. But he really couldn't bring himself to care overmuch when her hands and lips were on him, holding him, touching him, drawing him toward her. Then they were in her bedroom and their mouths and arms and bodies met on her bed, and this was how it was supposed to be, not—_

_"I had the most terrifying dream," he said softly, "I dreamed that—"_

_"_You_ had died?"_

_"_You_ had died, and I never saw you again. You had the same dream?"_

_"Yes, but it was only a dream…"_

_"Just a dream…"_

_"Yes—see, feel, I have a body, it has a pulse—look, there is no wound, my body is whole— and here—" she placed her hand on his chest, "I feel your heart beating. Simply a terrible dream."_

_"Yes… Enough of dreams," he said then, "This is life, real life, not those dreams," and he drew her close against him, pulled the quilt over them both, and he kissed her again and again…_

That is how that night _should_ have ended… A voice seemed to say silently, but neither in the room heard it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Soo… an extra long piece for you all. Doesn't make up for a year's worth of not-posting, but… it helps. …Right:)


	6. Possession

Well, we're getting down to the end, folks… let me know what you think. Please? I didn't take a year to update this time… :) Yes, it's a shorter chapter, but again… trying to not take a year between chapters. Please R&R!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Black is the Color **

Chapter 6. Possession

Logan sighed as he trudged along the slushy road, back into the town. The sun was rising, and he was only now getting back—those miles across the moor were _hard_ ones, even for him, made even more difficult by the constantly blowing wind and snow. Add to this the pressure of knowing he was leaving the kids alone to get help for Rogue—Rogue, who never seemed to get a break, who solved one facet of her difficult powers only to have something _else_ go haywire… well. It made for a stressful journey all around. And Xavier had been less than helpful, sounding a bit distracted as he listened to Logan's call, replying absently for Logan to 'do what he could' to help, and otherwise wait for him, Xavier, to join them the next day. Or evening. Or night.

Add to all of this the disturbing tales of supernatural problems at the inn, tales he'd heard the locals spin out over their backgammon boards over the past week. Tales that eerily matched the report Piotr, Kitty, and Kurt had given to him about Rogue and Remy the night before… He was making the best time he could, to get back to them, but a sinking feeling told him that whatever was going on, it had been too late to stop it even the night before. _And today is Halloween, ripe time for freaky stuff to happen anyway, _he thought darkly, and picked up his pace down the street toward the inn.

He finally stepped in the door, and stamped ice and snow from his boots, and hung his coat up to dry. Things were quiet… _Too quiet, _he finished the inevitable thought suspiciously. _Too quiet for a building full of nine teen—waitaminute._ He shook himself._ It's dawn, they're teenagers, there is _no way_ any of them will be awake at this hour. The silence is a good thing,_ he reminded himself, and visibly relaxed as he made his way up the narrow stairs. He decided to poke his head in on Piotr and Remy, since Rogue was ill and out of commission, and since they were the least likely to wake everyone else in the building merely by waking up themselves. _Which room were they in? Down the hall, second door on the right—_ He entered the room, and froze, the unmistakable smell of blood hitting his senses. _I knew it was too quiet. Damn._ He looked around the room; no apparent puddles, no bodies, except the solid form of Piotr in the cot by the window.

"Hey, Tin Man," he said gruffly, and was gratified to see the Russian's pale eyes open immediately.

"_Da?_" He said, shook his head, and more intelligibly stated, "Ah. You are back. Where is Remy?" He asked, looking around for his absent roommate.

"That's just what I was going to ask you," Logan returned grimly. "I smell blood."

"His?" He rolled out of bed as he asked.

Wolverine sniffed experimentally, and frowned. "Well… not exactly… sort of. It's the strangest blood I've ever smelled. Definitely blood, and pretty definitely the Cajun's, but… odd, somehow. There's something else there. Older? More metallic? I don't know. But I bet when we find him, we'll find out."

"Wolverine?" Piotr was bending over Remy's bed, his face still. "Find Remy soon, I think we must. He cannot have much strength left, look."

Wolverine looked, and felt a chill: The bed was soaked in blood, enough to go through two blankets, and spread a circle a foot and a half wide that spelled death. He couldn't even imagine how the Cajun had stood with that much blood loss, much less walk away, as he so obviously had. And there was no indication of a struggle, either, as though he had simply begun hemorrhaging in his sleep.

"Shit. Let's get the others to help look; there's no telling where he might be, this damn place has more nooks and crannies than an English muffin."

"Like, keep it down," Kitty said from the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Petey, who are you—oh! Mister Logan! You're back! What'd the Prof say?"

"Never mind that," Logan said. "Do you know where the Cajun is?"

"Remy? No, why—ohmigod." She caught sight of the bed. "Are those his blankets? Ohmigod, _ohmigod!" _She shrieked on the last word, enough to bring everyone else tumbling from their beds at a run, ready for combat as trained, Logan noted with approval.

Well, it was _one_ way of getting everyone up in a hurry.

Quickly he outlined the mission for them—Find Remy, Damn Quick—but before they all went rushing off, Kitty flung a hand up, signaling them to wait. She gasped a breath to finish calming herself, and said, "Hold on a sec—_think_. What's the _one _thing that could _possibly_ get Remy up and moving with a wound that—that bad?"

"Rogue," Logan said, realization dawning as he finally noticed she was the only one who hadn't shown up in response to Kitty's scream.

As a group, they all ran to Rogue's room. The door was firmly closed and locked; it didn't even rattle in the frame.

"Half-Pint," Logan said tightly, his eyes fixed on the door, "Get in there and open that door."

"But—"

"_Get. In. There._" He growled. "I can smell Remy's blood, _and_ hers, with that—whatever-it-is, too. And there's a lot of it."

Kitty paled, and vanished through the door. A second later, they heard her struggling with the lock, but finally the door opened. The coppery tang of blood was strong enough that even those without superpowered senses could smell it rolling out as the door opened. A curious feeling of the air being simultaneously chillingly cold and smoldering-hot also washed through them; even Logan shuddered at the gut-twisting, strange sensation.

As though the whole thing were a horror movie, it seemed to Logan to take years to look around the newly revealed anteroom. There, beside the lone chair by the wall-to-wall window, solidly black in the morning light, were two unmistakably masculine boots, with a fancy red coat tossed hastily across the chair's arms, as though the wearer couldn't wait to get it off. A hat was dropped on the floor, as well as a gun-belt with a matched set of antique pistols. Logan found it harder to see as he moved his gaze further inward—literally _harder to see_; mist seemed to shift and obscure his sight, though there was clearly no mist in the room… Spilled carelessly across the doorway to the bedroom was an extremely old-fashioned man's dress shirt, with lace at the throat and wrists. At one time, it had been white, but now it was freshly soaked in blood, and had at least four bullet holes in it. It continued to take his brain a maddeningly long time to process the images his eyes were presenting to it, as his gaze traveled up the high bed to the two closely intertwined figures there—and his sight literally refused to work. He simply could not tell who was in the bed—at first glance, it was two strangers, but then a second later his eyes shifted and in his periphery it _looked_ like Rogue and Remy—but then it wasn't again.

What stood out with unerring clarity were the bright red spots of color. The first he noticed were on the man's chest, splashes that matched the placement of those on the shirt on the floor. Lying in his arms was a young woman, wearing nothing more than a thin shift and her long hair; he could tell the garment was thin because she, too, had blood marking her body—not the man's, though. The angles were all wrong.

No, her terrible wound was indicated by a bright bloom of color between her shoulder blades, and as she shifted sleepily in the bed and turned—her hem rose alarmingly high; the bedclothes had been kicked down to her knees—he could see that it was matched by a stain on her breast that plastered the thin fabric to her body. The shift was also powder-burned on the front, indicating a gunshot fired at close range.

Neither of them seemed to notice that with wounds like those, they ought to be dead.

_How can they not be dead?!_ Logan's mind screamed at him, the sight of two should-be-dead figures somehow more ghastly in their moving. He forced the panicked thought back, and continued to will his sight to bring him information.

From their positions, and the state of the bed, it was clear what they had been—or _were_—or were _about_ to be—doing. (He devoutly hoped that, if it _was_ Remy and Rogue lying there, it was the 'about to be' option. Otherwise, the Cajun would die. _For real_ this time.) She lay more or less curled up against him, one arm thrown across his chest, her legs tangled in his, her face in the crook of his neck.

He had one leg across her thighs—it was the only thing keeping that hem _down,_ and for her sake it'd _better_ not be Rogue wearing something like _that—_but he had what looked like soft leather pants on. Granted, they were practically skintight, but given that they were the only piece of clothing the man had on, Logan was glad enough for them. (Especially if that _did_ turn out to be Remy.) One of his arms curved beneath her, and its hand was resting _very_ firmly on her rear, while the other came across her body and was buried in the bedclothes, keeping her in a cocoon of his well-muscled arms. (Logan chose to ignore Kitty's comment about not knowing Gambit was so _built.)_

He took a step toward the bed, and stopped in utter shock as he suddenly was faced with nearly four feet of honed steel, and glittering, dark, _human_ eyes—in what was unmistakably an older Remy LeBeau's face, now crouched protectively over the woman, who was beginning to stir.

A bigger shock was the steely voice that issued from the man's mouth, the accent so strange coming from that familiar face that the words themselves almost didn't register. "You take a step closer to her," he hissed, "And I'll gladly run you through."

"Gambit," Logan said, lifting his hands in an 'I'm harmless' gesture, "Gambit, it's me. Logan." He started to take another step forward, but was stopped mid-step as the rapier was suddenly bending its length against his heart, pressing just hard enough to break the skin. Remy's arm was coiled with tension, clearly waiting for the chance to run him through.

"I do not know of your 'Gambit,' sir," he said stiffly, "But continue closer at your peril."

"Roarke?" Came Rogue's voice, sleepily—Rogue's voice without her trademark Southern twang. "Roarke, what—Dear God in heaven, who's that?" She scrambled for covers and froze as Roarke's free hand pressed her flat to the bed, hand splayed across one breast. A growl escaped Logan before he could stop it.

Roarke began to answer, then paled, and looked down at where his hand rested on her chest, covered in blood. "Not a dream…" he whispered, dropping the rapier and frantically pawing at her front, searching for the wound; she was equally panicked, catching sight of the blood that liberally painted his chest. She ran her hands worriedly across his chest, smearing the blood to try to see the wounds which weren't there, before he crushed her to his chest to look at the stain of blood on her back. He tore the neck of her gown to bare the place, and heaved a sigh of relief when he found blood-covered, but smooth skin.

They clung to each other for a moment, then parted. Confusion was in both of their eyes as they looked around the room; it seemed to Logan that Remy was looking closer to his actual age, and it was easier to _see_ them, as though the sunlight pouring through the window were burning away the mist/not mist obscuring his vision. "Did it really happen?" Rogue asked Remy, and her voice had a more neutral accent. He shook his head in response, and when he next looked around again, there was more of 'Remy' in his eyes.

"I-I don't know," he replied shakily, continuing to hold her close. He closed his eyes. "No… no, I don't _want_ to know…"

She hiccupped a sob against his chest, and moaned, "I don't want to remember… I don't want to… It was… Oh God!" She paled, looking like she was going to be ill, and sank against him in a half-faint; he collapsed around her, folding her in his arms.

The ensuing moment of silence seemed to ease the tension in the room. It was broken by Kitty, who tentatively reached out and touched Rogue's shoulder. "Rogue?" She said softly, and was rewarded by teary eyes turned toward her. "A-are you—you? Who are you?"

Rogue swallowed. "I—I think I'm back. Oh God… Rem? Remy?" She reached up and touched his face. "You there?"

Flickering red eyes opened, and blinked tiredly at her. "'lo, _chere_," he drawled. "Anyone figure out what de _hell_ is going on?"

They both turned haunted eyes toward Logan, who growled in frustration.

"Damnit," he said, "What're you all looking at _me_ for? I don't know anything about ghosts…" he paused, and his eyes narrowed, "But I know who does. You, you, and you," he pointed at Bobby, Amara, and Piotr. "You three go into the village and find Old Robert. He's the one who got us _into_ this mess, and maybe with his help we can figure something out 'til the Professor gets here."

He turned to the pair in the bed. "You—" this aimed at Remy, "get the hell out of her bed. And you—"

"Yeah? Neither of us _asked _for this, you know," Rogue snapped, cheeks flaming.

"—Get some clothes on, kid, that dress is too short." He half-smiled at her; she rolled her eyes.

"Fine, fine," she groused, poking at Remy. "You heard the man, Cajun, out o' my bed. And the rest o' you, _out._ I'll see you downstairs in ten minutes."

"Five." Wolverine flatly contradicted her. "And if you're not down, I'm coming in. That door stays _unlocked. _Got me?"

Rogue swallowed. "Gotcha."

They all filed out of the room, Remy turning to give her a last lost look, which she answered with a helpless shrug.She didn't know what was going on, either, but she was beginning to get really scared about it. Each time she slid into this past person's life, it was a little harder to come back to herself; how long before she _couldn't _come back at all?

She rubbed her breastbone distractedly, still feeling the incredible heat from the shot. Then, shuddering, she rose to find clothes and scour the blood from her skin. She was feeling woozy—from blood loss incurred in her mind, she supposed. _I really hope I stay me,_ she thought. _I don't know if I'll survive another slip. I just wish I knew what she wanted… Bess? Just tell me what you want and I'll do it! Just don't kill me to get it!_

There was no answer, only a faint sigh that could easily have been Rogue, it sounded so tired.

But she'd been holding her breath, hoping for an answer, and _couldn't _have sighed.

She scrambled for her clothes, suddenly eager to get downstairs.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Please please review… I'd like to know how this chapter read, especially since I didn't go over it numerous times… only twice for minor tuning up. Let me know if I rushed anything or if anything read weird to you… Like as not I'll rewrite and repost this later, but the bones of the plotline are here :)


	7. Confrontation, Revelation

Hey—Nathalia Potter, another author on decided in a burst of inspiration to finish my little "Rogue's Favorite Ghosts" ditty, set to the tune of "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music. Go check it out—it's awesome and hilarious! Very nice companion-piece to this fic. _Three_ thumbs up, Nathalia! (Well, we _are_ dealing with mutants in the Xmen universe, right?)

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**Black is the Color **

Chapter 7. Confrontation, Revelation

After Bess' ghost had—_sighed—_or whatever—at her, she simply dove for whatever clothes would decently cover her, and hightailed it out of the suddenly too-close room. On her way out, though, she grabbed Bess' shift and Roarke's shirt, which had remained stubbornly, eerily solid. It seemed to _her_ that it was only fair that the physical belongings of the ghosts should fade with the ghosts' leaving, but nooo. The clothes were irrefutable proof. There was no way to leave this place now, immediately, and shrug the whole thing off as 'something in the water.' The boots and guns and coat remained, too, draped on and around the chair in the anteroom. She shook away the tactile memory of the smooth leather boots beneath her hands as she tugged them down his legs, shuddered at the neck-prickling sensation of his hands combing her hair down her back, hair far longer than she'd _ever_ worn it…

"…But Remy doesn't _know_ what's goin' on!" Rogue heard the Cajun's protest as she came down the stairs, running her hands through her disordered (barely even _shoulder length, damnit!) _hair.

"Logan," She said, her voice rough and raw—with screaming, she remembered—"leave him alone. Neither of us really knows what's going on."

Both men rose from the kitchen table, concerned expressions on their faces as she joined them. Remy, she saw, was still in the leather breeches, though he'd grabbed a shirt somewhere on his way down. Wordlessly, Remy handed her a mug of tea; equally silently she thanked him, and ignored Logan's angry expression as she sat close beside him. Logan could just deal; she needed to be beside Remy right now.

Involuntarily she winced as she opened her mouth to sip the steaming liquid. Predictably, Logan immediately demanded, "What's wrong with your mouth? Cajun, did you do something to her?"

"What did it _look_ like I was doing that could have hurt her m—" Remy started indignantly, thinking Logan meant, had he hit her, but cut himself off in mid-sentence abruptly at the inadvertent _double entendre _he had nearly made, and amended quickly, "Don't answer dat."

Rogue eyed him for a brief second, to be sure his statement _was _inadvertent, and answered Logan. "No, Remy didn't do anything to hurt me—" She hoped he didn't notice she didn't say 'Remy did _nothing _to me at all,' since she wasn't quite certain that was accurate, but then, neither she nor Remy had been 'in charge' last night, so to speak. "Remy didn't hurt me; it was the bastards who killed Bess who did it."  
"Bess? _Killed?" _Logan sat back in his seat, his expression becoming less fierce. "Maybe you'd both better tell me what's been going on, in your own words, before we go any further."

Rogue felt Remy tense beside her, and she laced her fingers through his. "You won't like… well, a lot of it," she warned. "You have to promise not to do _anything _to Remy." He squeezed her fingers gratefully. Grumbling, Logan agreed, and settled in to listen.  
Remy went first, and as he spoke he swore it felt like Roarke was perched just barely on his mind's edge, just enough that he kept Remy closely informed about the events leading to his death, and Roarke's own feelings throughout. Overwhelming amongst these was the highwayman's unending passion for Arabessa Dawson, the daughter of the innkeeper. By the time he finished the story, he felt exhausted, and had the unsettling feeling that Roarke had settled in, somewhere behind his eyeballs, and was only politely letting him keep control of his body, for now at least.

Rogue spoke next, and he suspected that Bess was visiting her, too, as her accent sharpened slightly as she related Bess' side of the tale in quiet detail. Her fingers gripped his convulsively when she spoke of the abuses the Redcoats had visited upon her, and as she haltingly spoke of the sacrifice Bess had made, he couldn't prevent a quiet '_Mon Dieu!_' from escaping his lips. It seemed the passion was two-sided in its depth and endurance, truly a 'star-crossed' pair of lovers.

Logan sat in silence for a moment, and stared at them. Then he addressed what was, to him, the most pressing question, directing it at Rogue. "So the ghosts had control of your bodies, right?"

"Right."

He paused, and with as much delicacy as he could muster, asked, "Does that mean that you and the Cajun—?"

She blushed fully red, slouched in her chair, embarrassed, and stammered, "Uh—actually—er—I'm—we're—not sure?" She bit her lip, and glanced at Logan, then Remy, worriedly.

Logan moved his gimlet stare to Remy. "Well, Cajun?" he asked. "Guys usually know when they've—well. There are—er… signs." He stopped awkwardly, and simply gave Remy an expressive look.

"Uhm. Well. I'm not—_positive—_but—I… don't _think_ we…" He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable with the whole conversation, the topic, _and_ sitting here clutching Rogue's hand with Logan four feet away. "De breeches, dey're… eh… pretty, um… pretty tight?"

Rogue's eyes shot wide open as she snorted tea up her nose, and started giggling uncontrollably. Logan merely raised his eyebrows and muttered, "Oh." Remy turned an indignant look on Rogue who was still chortling beside him.

"I'm sorry, Rem… oh…" More laughter. "But… but…" More giggles, fed mostly by incipient hysteria, Remy realized. "Ah jus' learned more 'bout male anatomy than I ever realized I never knew!"

Her response was jumbled, confused, but at least she was laughing a bit. Well, more than a bit. Remy gripped her hand, and Logan notwithstanding, put his arm around her and simply hugged her. Hard. Her nearness, though, seemed to give Roarke strength, and Remy could feel him hammering for control of his body.

Apparently Rogue felt it, too, for she sat upright abruptly, with a gasp, and said, hesitantly, "Remy? Do you feel them too?"

"_Oui,_" he breathed, and went still.

Logan peered at them from across the table. "Feel them? Do you mean they're here? Now?"

Both teens nodded, trancelike in their expressions and movements, and Logan got the uneasy feeling he was about to meet Bess and Roarke, face to face. "What do you two _want_?" he growled. "Why are you putting these kids through all of this?"

He really wasn't expecting an answer, and so was startled when Remy—Roarke?—answered. The Cajun's features looked more careworn, more scarred and aged, somehow, than they had ten seconds ago. "What is it that causes ghosts? Unfinished business."

"Well, if you need to say goodbye to each other, or whatever, just _do_ it, and leave these kids alone!" Logan demanded, out of patience with romantic ghosts, and inns, and teenagers, and Why-did-Chuck-leave-me-to-deal-with-all-this-by-myself?

Rogue/Bess laughed musically. "Oh, it isn't goodbyes we're after," she said lightly. "Not really. We need to talk to Tim, and Snythe, you see."

"Tim and—what?" Logan looked at them in confusion.

"Tim was our hostler—he took care of the inn's stables and horses," Bess explained.

"And the lecherous bastard betrayed me to the Redcoats," Roarke growled. At her look, he exclaimed, "What? He was always pawing at you when he thought no one was looking, and who _else_ would have given us up?" He turned back to Logan. "Captain Snythe was the lowlife who hurt my 'Bessa, here, and shot me down. But since I killed him a moment before I died, he never had to answer for his crimes face to face. His crimes were so great, however, that his spirit clung to the earth as a ghost, rather than go to his well-earned punishment. We need to see him go to that punishment."

Logan shook off the sheer weirdness of these two young people, familiar to him, sitting here speaking calmly about their own murders. The occasional cutesy cuddle between them wasn't helping the weirdness factor, either.

"So," he said now, "Why pick Remy and Rogue? Why not choose some other couple from the area, and why wait 250 years to settle things?"

"Well," Bess replied, "We needed a young couple in love, of course," she smiled at Roarke. Inwardly, Rogue smacked her forehead with her hand. _I'll never live _that_ down, thanks Bess,_ she thought at the interloper in her mind. "Also, we are not always as strongly—_here_—as we are now. So there were years, decades, lost there. And we _have_ tried before. But most of the couples either left right away, or were unable or unwilling to help us. But this one, she you call—Rogue? Her mind is already equipped, somehow, to handle other presences in her mind without going mad. And Remy there has shared in Rogue's mind, and so has similar traits."

Belatedly, Wolverine realized she was speaking about Rogue's absorption ability, and Remy's empathic sense. He felt a surge of warmth toward the Cajun, that he'd voluntarily share in Rogue's feelings and confusion with her mutation. _But that didn't mean he _liked _the Cajun, _he reminded himself sternly.

"Also," Remy picked up the thread, "Tim had to bring the young couple _to_ us, as part of his penance. He had to search them out and somehow get them here, where we could make use of them. I think he only wanted some profit, he never thought people would die. He's astonishingly corporeal, for a ghost, much better than we are. I _believe_ it comes from his very true sorrow and guilt over the trouble he caused while alive. He's so _here _that at times he can even move objects."

Logan's forehead creased. "But if you're Bess, and you're Roarke, who's Tim?"

The ghosts looked at him expectantly from Rogue and Remy's eyes.

The answer came to him like a thunderbolt. "_Old Robert?" _he asked incredulously. "Old Robert is a ghost?"

They both smiled. "Got it in one," Roarke said.

"Okay, so that's three… Who's Snythe?"

Bess' expression was suddenly crushed, and Roarke tightened his grip across her shoulders, and answered Wolverine's question. "Alas, Snythe is much in death as he was in life, ever looking for the easiest path to power. And as we've said, those with minds similar to Rogue and Remy's are easiest to infiltrate. The person he's entered is well-known to you, but obviously quite powerful, as Snythe's been struggling to enter him for more than a week now, but still has not succeeded. He's trying to take over—"

"The Professor," Logan whispered in horror. It made sense though; the distraction, the lack of focus in his usually laser-like thoughts, the uncharacteristic lack of communication, even his vagueness last night about when he'd be able to get here to help… This Snythe sounded like a regular Maquis de Sade, and for one like _that_ to be in control of the world's most powerful telepath… he shuddered. Suddenly, the ghosts' problems had become the X-men's.

"Stay here," he said. "I'm going to assemble the team." He rose and made to leave the room, but turned back at the doorway. "And Rogue, Remy? Hang in there—we'll figure out a way to help you. _All_ of you."

He left, and two ghosts and two teens looked at each other from two bodies, and tried to figure out _how_ they were going to get out of _this_ mess.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Well… it's only slightly less than three months since I updated this… not a year… that counts for something, right? Very likely only one chapter more of this, then on to another fic set in medieval times (and of course still working on Xanadu). So please get comments or rewrite suggestions in! I will be tweaking this later for plot cleanliness; any suggestions or glaring errors I should correct? Email me at Alara Celt hotmail. com . Just remove the spaces, of course. :)


	8. Connection

Since it's been (eek!) five months since I updated poor Black, here's a recap of events so far:

X-men team goes to England for a graduation present while the Professor attends a world mutant-human relations conference. They meet Old Robert, drive around to various haunted inns all day, and end up stranded a looong way from everything in a little village with no telephones, few cars, and one old, haunted inn which they end up lodging in.

Rogue begins having strange dreams as though she used to live in the inn, and we learn a little about Bess and Roarke, longtime friends and lovers, betrayed at the inn 250 years before. Rogue has dreams while awake; Remy is concerned. That night, Remy, too, has extremely vivid dreams from Roarke's viewpoint. The next morning, Logan finds them together in Rogue's room. He's upset, and leaves to play backgammon with the locals.

Rogue and Remy enlist Kurt, Kitty and Amanda to help them figure out what's going on; they figure out they're being possessed, and the ghosts are getting stronger all the time. They fill Logan in on what's going on, and he leaves on a hike to get _any_ cell signal to get the Professor to come. The Professor sounds distracted and unconcerned on the phone.

Meanwhile, Rogue and Remy are dreaming/experiencing Bess and Roarke's last hours of life. Logan arrives back at the inn to utter silence, noses about. He finds a large bloodstain in Remy's bed. The team looks for him, finds Rogue's door locked. They burst in and see the ghosts actually manifested with Rogue and Remy's bodies; Bess and Roarke's death wounds are present on their clothing, and the pair are soaked in blood. They awaken, and for several moments _are_ Bess and Roarke, not Rogue and Remy at all.

They gradually come back to themselves, shaken and frightful. They sit down with Logan and have a discussion—ghosts included—about why the pair are being possessed. They find out that the man who killed them, Snythe, is still haunting the earth, as well, and is in possession of the Professor, thereby endangering _everyone_. Snythe needs to be brought to justice, and Bess and Roarke can't leave the earth 'til that's done. Logan promises to help them in any way he can, and gathers the team to discuss how.

That's where it left off end of Chapter 7. So… Here's Chapter 8! Enjoy! Remy and Rogue's relationship takes a huge step forward here; wonder how Logan will take it? Hahaha. As always, reviews are appreciated!

Black is the Color

By Alara

Chapter 8: Connection

After Logan left, Remy and Rogue—and Roarke and Bess—were left alone in the kitchen. Remy—no, it was Roarke—leaned forward and gripped Bess' hands. "We _will_ be free. But we have to get Snythe to come here. You know that you, at least, are strongest here."

"Because it's where I lived—and died," Bess returned bitterly. "I know. But rogue has been showing me how powerful this Professor of theirs is, and Snythe will hardly want to leave the peace conference, where he can cause so much turmoil. The more confused things are around Snythe's host, the more he will be able to gain control over him."

"That's true." Roarke agreed. "We saw that with that doctor in 1940, remember? Snythe used him to murder people, and the more upset the townsfolk were, the more tightly Snythe was able to hold the doctor. They never suspected the doctor of the murders—he'd been a trusted friend for years."

"But do you remember how he was freed of Snythe's influence?" Bess asked.

"Yes," Roarke replied, following her train of thought. "The doctor wrestled control back long enough to go to the site of the murders, and the murdered ghosts having more power there, they _pulled_ him from the doctor's body."

"That's right," Bess said. "And they almost dragged Snythe's spirit over the border into true death, too, but they weren't quite strong enough. They hadn't been ghosts long enough." She frowned. "Which leaves us with our original problem. He won't want to come _here._ I'm stronger _and_ we could drag him over into death. Why ever should he come here?"

Roarke thought a while. Then, a smile slowly started to spread across his face. "The one thing that was always more important to him than power." He said. "Revenge." At her puzzled look, he elaborated, "if he thinks that I—we—will get everything back that he tried to deny us by killing me… If he thinks that, after killing him and being killed by him, I _still_ get it all—a life, a home—he will be driven to come here, to stop it. Remember, I used to be in his regiment, and he could never stand that I was more well-liked than he was. When my turning outlaw only made me more well-known and well-liked, he vowed I would die before I gained it all. You see, before I turned outlaw, all I talked about was earning enough to muster out and marry you. He _knew_ about you. He was jealous of my love—and of your love for me. Hence, the setup. The trap, which 'til now has more or less succeeded. But—"

"If he thinks we've found willing hosts to give us back everything we've lost—" she interjected excitedly.

"Yes, if he believes that, not even the lure of power will be enough to keep him from coming here and trying to kill us again. The only question is, are Remy and rogue willing to help us in this? It is their bodies at risk, after all."

Bess' expression turned stony. "Willing? Who cares? Today—Hallows' Eve—and tomorrow—Hallows' Day—we are, as ghosts, at our strongest. They'd find it difficult to evict us."

"True," Roarke said slowly, feeling a surge of panic from Remy. "But the job will be easier if they are cooperating. Why would you even consider compelling rogue? That's not the Bess I know." Bess looked away, and Roarke caught her chin in one hand and forced her to look at him. "_Tell_ _me._"

"It's because—because—I'm _frustrated._" Bess burst out. "I'm _tired_ of being good. This is the first real chance in two hundred fifty years to be together—to touch, to connect with each other—and I don't want to lose the opportunity."

His expression gentled, and he brushed her cheek with one hand. "Why don't you _ask_ Rogue if she is willing to help?" he said, and his eyes unfocused. "Remy says he is willing to cede control of his body to me—but only if Rogue does."

"But she _won't_." Bess insisted. "She says she's had too many people in her head try to take over to do it willingly. She—" she stopped, and her gaze went blank for a moment. A hint of annoyance touched her expression; she sighed, and said, "She wants to talk to Remy. Right now."

"All right," Roarke agreed amiably, and slid sideways to let Remy come to the forefront. "Rogue? What's wrong?" Remy asked.

"I can't do it," rogue said frantically. "The idea of giving up control… especially with the way Bess feels… I can't do it, Remy."

"Don't you want to help them?" He asked, confused.

"_Of__ course_ I want to help them. I've been living Bess' life for the past couple of days; it's as personal for me now as it is for her. But I can't trust that she'll give control back, and I can't trust her while she's _in_ control, to not—" she broke off, blushing.

"What is it? Roarke tells me that their power will peak tomorrow, and den begin to fade the day after, gradually becoming less and less prominent, so what's de problem, _cherie_?"

"It's—well, it's two things, mainly. First is that we really _could_ be seriously hurt by helping them. I mean, it's the _Professor_ we're going to be heading against."

"No," he corrected her gently, "it's _Snythe_ we're going to be fighting. And we'll just be letting Roarke an' Bess use us t' distract Snythe so he relaxes his hold on de Prof long enough for de Prof to kick him out. De Prof _is_ going to be fighting him, too." He assured her. "Once he's out, Bess and Roarke will leave us, too, to grab hold o' Snythe before he can get away, an' take him to his eternal punishment, or whatever it is waitin' for him. Didn't Bess explain any o' dis?""I… haven't been listening," Rogue admitted sheepishly. "But it's her fault! She's just _obsessed _with—" she broke off again, flushing darker.

Remy took her hands in his, looking worried. "Whatever it is, dat's what's really bothering you. Tell me. Whatever it is, we'll work t'rough it. After all, we can't stay possessed forever."

She looked at him a moment, then sighed. "Well. I guess this conversation was going to come up sooner or later. Okay. To put it plainly: Bess has got it _bad_ for Roarke." She looked at him expectantly.

He laughed. "Well, of course. Dat's what started all of this."

She shifted uncomfortably. "No, that's not what I mean, though she _does_ love him. I mean, she's got it bad for him _right now._ Physically. While she's in my_ body_," she added meaningfully. "And thanks to my re-living her life, I feel it, too. My body remembers…_it_. And misses it. You. Him." She shook her head. "Whatever. And being…um, _interrupted_ this morning didn't help, either."

He looked at her in astonishment for a moment, blinking. "Are you sayin' yo're lusting after my Cajun body?" He asked incredulously.

The blush that had begun to fade returned with a vengeance. "Yes," she muttered. "She—I—just want to…well, jump you right now. I'm afraid if I let her have control, she's going to do just that."

"Oh." Remy felt vaguely insulted. "Does dat mean you _aren't _lusting after me?"

"Yes! No. I mean, I _am_, but… augh, this is so embarrassing. The…lust…" she got the word out "is distracting her—me—from _everything_, and if I—she—we don't do something about it, she says she knows she won't be able to help effectively tomorrow."

"Dis _is_ embarrassing," he muttered. "I can't believe I'm going to ask you this, but… can't you…y'know…?" he shrugged expressively.

She buried her face in her hands, mortified. "Uh, no. It's not just… It's not just the sex that she misses; it's the whole 'making love' thing. The connection. The mutual desire. The complete union to another person whom you love, who loves you back."

Remy was quiet a moment, and then drew gently away. "And I'm not dat person," Remy said ruefully. "I understand."

Her eyes flew open. "No! That's not it at all! I _do_ love you, Remy, I really do." She swallowed, and lowered her voice. "I'll admit, the option of sleeping with you _has_ crossed my mind more than once since I got control over my powers. It's been crossing my mind much more frequently these past couple of days, thanks to Bess sharing her life with me. I know what, exactly, happens, thanks to her memories; there's nothing to scare me or make me nervous, or anything. It's just…"

"Just…?" he prompted her, when she hesitated.

"Just that… we've only talked about sex a little, really. I mean, we know we both want it, but we haven't really talked about when or... or anything," she finished awkwardly.

Remy was silent a moment. Then, "Well, we're talking about it now," he offered tentatively. "I don't t'ink it'll come as a shock to hear dat I _want_ to make love to you. I've said so before. I don' t'ink y' believed me." He added dryly. "An' Roarke inundating me wit' images and feelings isn't helping my self-control, either. You're not alone in dis." He sighed then, and leaned back. "An' while I'm happy—ecstatic—to hear dat y' wanna be wit' me, physically, I don't want to pressure you into anyt'ing. And if dat means we have to fight Snythe tomorrow wit' Bess a little distracted, then dat's what we're going to have to deal with. I'm not letting her, or me, or _anyone_ force you into sleeping with anyone if de time isn't right, if you don't feel ready. But for de record," he added, "I do love you, too. Just let me know when you are ready."

She nodded, and thoughtfully stood, leaving the room quietly. Remy sighed heavily, and leaned back in his chair. _You could have seduced her, you know_, Roarke informed him. "I know," he said aloud. _Then why didn't you?_ _"_Wouldn't have been right, fo' her, fo' us… Dat's not how our first time should be. I really do love her. An' if lovin' her means denying m'self, dat's all dere is to it. Simple." _Difficult._ "Hard, but simple." There was a ghostly chuckle. _I knew I liked you. No wonder I feel so comfortable in your body, sharing your mind._Remy chuckled as well. "T'anks, I guess. Just hope dis doesn't cause problems tomorrow, having dis all unresolved and everything." _Hmm. That could change—she's coming back. _"What?"

Rogue re-entered, an intense look on her face. She bit her lip, and visibly held her breath for a moment. Then she crossed to stand in front of him. "Yes."

"Huh?" He sat up straighter.

"Yes. You said to let you know." His look of confusion didn't change. "_Yes._ I—and this is Rogue talking— want to sleep with you, Remy. Really," she added, at his anxious expression. "What you just said… that you'd wait 'til _I_ said the time was right… made me realize we _are_ ready, and we _can_ handle our relationship on an adult level." He stared at her, wide-eyed. _Is she really saying this? _ She knelt, and picked up his slack, shocked hands in hers. "_Please_ don't make _me_ beg _you. _It'd ruin your reputation. Besides, unlike most virginal teenagers, we have the advantage of direct past experience to draw on."

"_Really_ _far_ in the past," Remy muttered humorously, unable to keep a smile from his face, and looked her in the eyes. "Are you really, really sure? Because I'm sure not going to say 'no,' you know."

"Yes, I'm really, really sure." She laughed. "Positive." She leaned forward and kissed him lingeringly on the lips. "When?"

"Now's not a good time?" He asked jokingly, waggling his eyebrows comically. "No… I suppose tonight is de only time other people won't be around. T'ink you'll last?" He smiled."Do you think _you_ will?" She countered, and kissed him again.

They parted, smiling like idiots at each other. Remy lifted her hands to his lips, and kissed them. "So. We're really going to…"

"Yes." She looked at him solemnly, a smile dancing in her eyes. "_Yes."_

Just then, Logan walked back in. They exchanged wide-eyed looks: how much of their conversation had he heard?

"The others are on their way, and we can discuss—" Logan broke off. "What are _you_ two so serious about?"

Mystified, he looked on as the pair dissolved into hysterical laughter. He shook his head. "Kids."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"We are _positive _the Professor's… possessed, or whatever, by this Snythe, right?" Wolverine asked, again. Despite the evidence of the two teens in front of him, he still seemed to have difficulty accepting that apparently sometimes, people _could_ be possessed by spirits.

At the moment, the whole team was arrayed around the large kitchen table, discussing ways to help Professor X free himself from his unwelcome guest. Remy and Rogue—or Roarke and Bess, whichever—had hardly let go of each other; at the moment, they sat so close beside each other they might as well have shared one chair.

"Yes, Wolverine," Old Robert said tiredly, leaning on the table. "We know that this Professor o' yours is the _most_ inherently powerful person to come t'rough these parts in a century. Believe you me, son, I'd have noticed, sure enough! Snythe wouldn't be able to resist possessing him. Ever power-hungry, that one was." He looked at Bess and Roarke. "I only wish I'd had eyes t' see it back then; we wouldn't be in this mess if not for m' idiocy." They waved off his implied apology.

"So vhy should he come here?" Kurt asked.

"Two reasons," Bess/Rogue said, ticking the points off on her fingers. Rogue said, "One, he told Wolverine he would come—" her accent switched smoothly to Bess'. "Snythe is canny enough to keep a host's companions insensible of the possession 'til it's too late. So he won't do something as drastically out of character for your Professor as abandoning his students in need."

"Man, that voice thing is _freaky_,_"_ Bobby muttered.

Beside him, Lance nodded. "You said it, man."

Kitty shot them an annoyed look as she dragged the topic of conversation back to the point. "So, what's the other reason?"

"Revenge," and it was definitely Roarke who spoke, as he put an arm around Bess, who leaned into him. "Once he realizes how well Bess and I and our respective hosts are getting along, he won't be able to leave us alone. He will do anything he can to make sure we don't regain, in any way, the life he took from us."

"He hates you that much?" Piotr asked wonderingly. "A harsh man, this Snythe is."

"Yes, and he won't hesitate to use the Professor's talents against us," Rogue said. "So what we were thinking is…" she hesitated. "You won't like it."

"Just spit it out, Rogue." Logan ordered.

"We were thinking that… Well. If the rest of you use your powers to attack Professor X, Snythe will be distracted with trying to keep his host body whole. He won't be using the Prof's powers against us as effectively, and that could give the Prof the edge he needs to push him out of his mind. Once he's out, Bess and Roarke can get hold of him, and take him… well, wherever it is ghosts go when they stop being ghosts."

There was a stunned silence. "You, like, want us to _attack_ Professor X?" Kitty asked incredulously.

Remy nodded. "He'll probably fight Snythe to keep from hurting any of you too badly," he said. "De more uncomfortable we can make it fo' Snythe, the more likely it is he'll leave de Prof."

"But vhere vill he go if he does leave ze Prof?" Kurt asked warily.

Rogue sighed. No, _Bess_ sighed. "Like as not, he'll try to jump into someone else nearby. This is why Roarke and I will be the ones physically closest to him. While he's mid-jump, we can leave these hosts and drag him into the spirit world. Once we've left Rogue and Remy's bodies, if you all get away as quickly as possible, he won't have anywhere to go. He can't haunt any of the buildings around here because he never lived here; there are few inhabitants for him to try to possess; it's our best chance to bring him to retribution at last."

"But a problem it could be, to get the professor here _tomorrow,"_ Poitr pointed out. "Troublesome it would be if he comes a day later, _da?_"

"Hmm. You're right, Tin Man." Logan said. "How _do_ we get X to come tomorrow, specifically?" They all thought a moment.

Bobby suddenly leapt from his chair. "I've got it!" he cried. "We—no, wait, we don't _have_ dynamite. Never mind." He subsided, ignoring the looks the others were giving him.

Amanda tentatively spoke up from where she was perched beside Kurt on the counter. "If it's revenge that's going to motivate this… Snythe… to come down here, then we really have to make sure he's convinced Roarke might win if he's not stopped _tomorrow_, right? He has to think the day after would be too late?"

Bess and Roarke nodded. "Basically, yes."

"Well, if what you say is true, and _he's_ possessed people for months on end, how did he do it?"

The pair looked uncomfortable. "Basically, he overpowered the other minds and locked them away. After he left some of his hosts, they dropped over dead or into a catatonic state because there was no mind, no 'self' left to take over when he was gone."

"It was only the very strong ones who managed to emerge 'alive' in any sense of the word from Snythe's possessing them." Bess added.

Logan sat bolt upright. "You mean, Rogue and Remy might not survive this?!"

"No, no," Bess put out her hands in a placating gesture. "They're _sharing _their minds with us; we're camping here, rather than staging a hostile takeover. Our possession of them is much less deep than what Snythe has done in the past."

"_This_ is a light possession?" Lance muttered incredulously. "You woke up in clothes that just—appeared—covered in blood!"

Roarke met his eyes. "Yes, and _that_ is light, compared to what Snythe has put others through, both in life and in death. It is why we_must_seize this chance to be rid of him, once and for all!"

"Like, okay, we get it: Snythe isn't good to have around. But still, how do we get him _here?_"

"I've been thinking." Amanda spoke again. "It's why I asked how Snythe managed it. I figure, he's a bad guy, bad guys never give the good guys credit for being good, right? They always assume the good guys are in it for themselves, too."

Logan considered that. "True enough. It's why Magneto didn't believe Xavier was _really_ in it for the greater good for so long. What're you thinking?"

"if someone went to Snythe—the Professor—and started telling him that he _had_ to come see Rogue and Remy, quick, that maybe something bad happened with Rogue's powers or something… If he believed that Bess and Roarke had _really_ possessed Rogue and Remy—I mean, permanently possessed them—if he believed that, wouldn't he come to see for himself? And try to—I don't know—interfere, somehow?"

Surprised looks chased around the table. "That's very good," Logan said. "That might work. What d'you think, Roarke?"

The young man nodded slowly. "I think that would work admirably. You have a quick mind, madam." He complimented Amanda, who turned pink as Kurt gave her a sound kiss on the cheek.

Old Robert spoke up. "And I think that I can be of use in getting him here. I shall be your message-bearer. I'll say I'm a villager who was sent by you, Mr. Wolverine, to retrieve the Professor. I'll play quite the befuddled old man, yes indeed! _Quite_ concerned about those teenagers whose minder wasn't even comfortable leaving them for a day. _Very_ nervous about the young lady and gentleman who haven't been themselves. Yes. And I can time my delivery of the news so that he will leave at first light, thus giving the rest of you time to plan."

"But… Old Trusty isn't working." Bobby objected. "How're you going to get back to town by tonight? It's like a hundred miles away!"

At that, Old Robert grinned. "And are you forgettin' I'm a ghost, then, lad?" He asked lightly—

—and vanished. The others, aside from Bess and Roarke, swore and leapt from their seats.

"He always did like an audience," Bess observed dryly.

Roarke rolled his eyes. "He did, at that. Now—" he raised his voice. "Let's take some time and figure out what, exactly, we can bring to bear against your Professor from a safe distance that won't kill him outright."

They settled down, and began to discuss something they never thought they'd have to—how to take down Professor X.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They broke up the discussion in the early evening, deciding that they were as ready as they were going to be with the time they had to work with. Amanda stood and declared that she was tired of sitting and talking, seized a surprised Kurt, informed him that they were going for a walk, and dragged him outside, coats in hand, to the crisp new snow. "Help!" was the last they heard before the door swung shut behind them.

Kitty bounced up. "Like, that sounds sooo romantic, Petey!" She gushed. "Let's go for a walk, too."

Piotr cast a perplexed look at her. "_Katja_," he said, "When you grow up in the Siberian waste, snow is not being so nice."

"Oh, c'moooon." She pleaded. "The moon is rising, and all those pretty colors are going to be reflecting off all that snow… Pleeeease?" she wheedled.

The Russian strongman turned to sap in front of their eyes. "_Da_. If it means that much to you, _Katja_."

She squealed in delight, grabbed their coats off the hooks by the door, and darted out. Piotr gave the rest of them one last look, as if to ask what he'd gotten himself into, and shrugged out into the drifts.

The others remaining exchanged glances. "Do you think we should go help those guys?" Lance ventured.

"Nah." Bobby said. "I think we should go ambush the lovebirds—there's still a lot of good snow out there!"

"Like you couldn't make more if you wanted," Lance scoffed, and then grinned. "But I like the way you think. Let's go get 'em!"

"Oh, _this_ is gonna be great," Logan muttered, _sotto voce_, half-smiling. "I hope they don't break anything." He turned, to where Rogue/Bess and Remy/Roarke still sat closely together at the table. "Aren't you going outside?" he asked them, as he paused before he left the room.

"Don' want Rogue here getting sick again." Remy reminded him, bumping Rogue with his shoulder. She smiled at that, 'til he continued, "She's a terrible patient. 'Bring me dis, Remy. Bring me dat.'"

She glared, and whacked him in the side. "Your consideration kills me. I never asked you for anything!"

"How d' you know?" he countered. "You were asleep."

"Then how could I ask for anything?"

"Y' talked in your sleep."

"And do you usually listen when people who are asleep talk to you?"

"No…" he drew the word out. "But Remy's learned dat if he doesn't listen to de women in his life, he ends up miserable. An' you're devious enough t' pretend t' be asleep an' talk to me just to see if I would."

Rogue laughed. "Your logic is very twisted. But I suppose any woman willing to put up with _you_ for long has to develop twisted logic just to survive."

He winked. "You're beginning to learn. Feeling twisted yet?"

She rolled her eyes at that, but before she could reply, Logan reappeared in the doorway. "Stripes. Can I talk to you a minute?"

"Sure." She followed him out of the kitchen into the inn's main room, where a fire crackled warmly. Before she cleared the doorway, she tossed over her shoulder, "Hey, Remy. Bring me a cocoa!"

He mimed throwing a mug at her; she stuck out her tongue and disappeared.

Smiling, he began to assemble ingredients.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"How're you holding up, Stripes?" Logan asked, looking at her seriously.

"Fine." Rogue replied. At his doubtful look, she repeated it. "No, really, I'm _fine." _Suddenly it was Bess sitting in front of him. It was the damndest thing—if Logan looked straight at the slight figure in the opposite chair, it was Rogue, but if he looked a little to the side, it was the long-haired young woman he'd seen this morning. _Let me talk to him, please,_ the ghost asked her, _I may be able to be of help to you. _Curious, Rogue had stepped aside and let Bess come to the forefront.

"Rogue has stopped fighting me," Bess informed him. "I no longer have to… shout, you might say. I don't believe she will become lost in my memories, as has been happening."

"I thought Remy was getting along okay with Roarke. Why is _he_ becoming… 'lost in the memories,' or whatever?" Logan demanded. "I really do _not_ want to see a repeat of this morning."

"Don't you trust them? Remy was bowled over because of the intensity of the memories invoked. Not only that, but his empathic sense picked up on Rogue's distress, and he, too, started to subconsciously fight Roarke's possession. Fighting a ghostly possession is rather like fighting a crushing-snake. The more one fights, the more powerless one becomes, because the ghost has to exercise so much more energy in maintaining contact with the host. Power, as a ghost, is either very, very subtle—un-noticeable—or very, very obvious. There is no happy medium, except that of cooperation. Once cooperation is achieved, however…" she shrugged. "Co-existence is possible. As you see."

Logan grumbled a moment, but couldn't find anything to argue with in that.

Bess eyed him for a moment. "Something I said is bothering you?"

"Well, what do you mean, do I trust them? Doesn't Rogue know? Of course I _trust_ them. I have to trust them with my life when we're in battle."

"But for you, that is very different from trusting them to take care of each other," she pointed out.

Logan sighed and slouched in his chair. "Yeah. I guess. It's just—"

"You don't want to see her hurt?"

"Yeah. She's been through a lot, and now…" he gestured at the inn in general. "Now this."

Bess shrugged. "She's handling it. Mostly with Remy's support."

"He has been there for her," he grudgingly admitted.

"More, perhaps, than you give him credit for?" Bess asked shrewdly, and leaned forward.

"Logan. Listen to me. If Rogue did not truly love Remy, and Remy did not truly love Rogue, we never would have gotten so far." His look remained skeptical.

"_Maybe_ Rogue would have had an unsettling dream while here. _That_ would be assuming Tim—Old Robert—even picked your group out as having likely helpers. He chose your group because it contained people around the proper age and strength, and two of that group were in love. _Real_ love, that denies the self for the sake of the other."

She explained, "Since Tim betrayed two true lovers to their deaths, his curse and his gift in his after-death penance has been to be able to see, at a glance, that kind of deep, abiding love in others. It's why I attached myself to Rogue with so much… enthusiasm. I apologize if it's startled you or frightened you in any way; that was not my intention." She took a breath. "I'd like to ask a favor of you."

"What?" The caution was back.

"Just trust us. Trust _them_. This evening, tonight. Trust them to take care of each other, to love each other selflessly. They need a demonstration of trust in them if they are to have the strength to aid us tomorrow. Your mistrust only serves to place further stresses upon them. It makes Rogue feel like a child," she added parenthetically. "And it makes Remy feel like you mistrust _him_,when you know full well he'd never do anything to Rogue that would harm her." She gave him a severe look.

"I suppose that's true," Logan grudgingly admitted, and gave her a sharp look. "But don't tell the Cajun I said so."

"I won't. _If_ you show that you trust them by not checking up on them every ten minutes like you usually do."

"I don't—" Logan started indignantly. "I'm just _careful,_" he said defensively.

She grinned at him, and said nothing.

"It's more like every _fifteen_ minutes."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, well, perhaps try seeing how they do _without_ chaperonage for a change."

"Why do you care, anyway?"

Her fierce expression gentled. "Because _they_ care, and I can tell how much your apparent mistrust hurts them. My father never tried such tricks with me, and I'm glad. The pain isn't worth it."

"Oh." He paused. "It really hurts Stripes?"

"Yes." She said evenly. He stared at her, then abruptly stood, muttering to himself, and strode out the door. Remy appeared a moment later, holding two steaming mugs.

"Everyt'ing all right?" He asked, as he sat beside her. She leaned into his side.

_What about it, Bess?_ Rogue thought at the other young woman. _What was that all about?_

_I couldn't help 'overhearing' your conversation with Remy this morning. I decided I'd done enough to upset you in recent days; I've just guilted your Logan into leaving you in peace, so you and Remy might have your night together without interruption._

_There's more to it than that._

A sigh._ Yes, I own, there is more to it. My last memory prior to my death is that of Snythe… handling me. I would rather _I_ have better memories. Since you've experienced my memories as though they were yours__, I__ would certainly rather leave you knowing __it__is better __than that. Knowing _it_ is far more beautiful than that. _

_Oh… well, thank you,_ Rogue thought, a bit awkwardly. _That's very… __thoughtful._

A ghostly chuckle. _You'll thank me more sincerely tomorrow morning,_ she assured her. _I'll leave you two alone now._

_Well, as alone as it gets with someone else in your head._

Another laugh. _Indeed.__ Enjoy, Rogue. Don't let him talk you out of it. It's a wonderful thing._

"_Chere?_" Remy nudged her. "_Are_ you all right?"

She turned a brilliant smile to him and to his surprise, threw her arms around him and kissed him deeply. "Yes. I'm _more_ than all right. So, do you want to go upstairs?"

The question came without preamble. It took him a moment to realize what she was talking about. "You mean you really meant it?"

In response, she pressed herself against him, kissing him with deeper intensity. "Yes," she said, when they were both breathless, "I _so_ definitely meant it."

"Well then," he said, nothing loath, as he unhesitatingly led her toward the stairs. "I don't want to keep de lady waiting."

Her laugh bounced off the walls as she followed happily, her hand in his. "Yes," she said. "I'm done with waiting."

The door clicked shut behind them. It seemed to close out the world, Snythe, Logan, all of the plagues and problems that disturbed their daily lives. Inside, it left a quiet space, warm and close, where a young man and a young woman could simply be together, show their love, and unite so closely that they become one.

Remy stopped briefly, after Rogue had removed his shirt and was busily removing her own. He stood behind her, and ran his hands down her bare arms, folding his hands loosely at her waist. "You're _really_ sure? Dere won't be crying in de morning?"

She laughed, turned in his arms, and made her intentions unmistakably clear. When he next became aware of anything besides _her,_ he was laying across the bed, Rogue half-naked on top of him. "That answer your question, sugar?" she asked. "Besides," she continued, as she got to work on the rest of their clothes. "I never cry when I'm with you. You make me happy. Now, quit worrying."

_Worrying_… the word rang a vague bell in his head, and an even longer while later, he muttered incoherently, "What 'bout Wolverine…?"

"He's taken care of." She said, and rolled herself under him pointedly. "Now, you don't really want to be thinking o' Logan right now, do you? C'mon and show me your playboy reputation is good for _something_."

"Whatever you say," he mumbled, lowering his face to hers again. "I love you."

"I love you, too." Her happy laugh was the last vestige of speech between them, before their minds turned thoroughly away from such things as conversation, and firmly toward each other.

The night was very long.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Soo… battle, and conclusion next chapter, I think. Let me know what you think! Reviews are always greatly appreciated. Sla'n! –Alara


	9. AsphyxiationRealization

Black is the Color

By Alara

Chapter 9: Asphyxiation/Realization

They woke at dawn, sleepily smiling at each other. Remy rolled over and kissed her. "Yo' not upset?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why should I be?"

He shrugged. "Isn't dat always how de story goes? Wild night, an' tears in de morning?"

She smiled, and kissed him back. "Not in _our_ story, apparently. Quit your worrying."

"I jus' want t' make sure you're okay wit' dis."

"Sugar." She gave him a sarcastic look. "Remy. Shaddup. If I wanted to stop, I'd've drained you last night and knocked you out. Okay?" Her vision unfocused; Bess was speaking to her. She sighed, "Damn. Get some clothes on; Logan's coming."

As he scrambled out of bed, scooping up articles of clothing, he teased, "T'ought y' were okay wit' dis?"

"_I_ am, but I don't know how okay with it _Logan_'ll be. An' I don't want to see that body o' yours skewered just yet. I've got other plans for it." She gave him an arch look as she pulled her shirt over her head. "Now get. Bess says you can go out the window."

He flashed a quick grin, and she couldn't say for certain if it was Remy or Roarke. "I certainly can. See you at breakfast." He swung the window case open and deftly lowered himself outside; Rogue closed and re-locked the sturdy iron catch just as a knock came on her door.

"Stripes?"

"Yeah?"

"You alone in there?"

"Ye-e-es…" Well, _now_ she was. Technically.

The relief in his voice was palpable. "Good. Well. I just wanted to make sure you were awake and, er, _you._ Breakfast's in ten minutes; I think the Prof, or whoever, is gonna be here soon."

"Be right down." She tied her shoes and tugged the bed into more-or-less neatness, then cautiously opened the door. Logan was nowhere in sight, but she heard him talking to Piotr. Her body tensed. Had Remy made it back to his room in time? But how could he have done?

"Morning, _mon ami,_" she heard his voice clearly, though it sounded appropriately sleepy, as though he'd just been awakened. Which, of course, he had, but he sounded sleepy in _his_ room, not hers. How had he gotten there so quickly?

"Out of bed, Gumbo," she heard Logan order gruffly, and relaxed: that was Logan's _usual_ greeting for Remy, not his pissed-off one, and certainly not whatever his greeting would be if he learned they'd slept together. Well… She considered, and winced. Probably _that_ one wouldn't involve too much conversation, and a lot more adamantium.

She shook her head, and turned for the stairs. By the time she got to the top landing, Remy was behind her. He kissed her gently on the side of the neck, hugging her. "Morning, c_herie._ Sleep well?" He asked all-too-innocently.

She laughed silently. "The best night I ever had." Her eyes gave him a different meaning than the simple words contained as she led him down the stairs.

"Mmm. Glad t' hear it. Hope it keeps up; y' haven't been sleepin' well in dis place." They reached the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen, a thick wall between them and the rest of the house. "Wolverine probably can't hear us now." Remy said. "Y' meant it?"

"About my best night?" He nodded. She laughed. "Of course I did. How did you get back so quickly? Roarke never made it around the inn in less than five minutes, and it was barely three before Logan was at your door!"

He grinned smugly. "Well, Roarke never t'ought o' goin' over de roof, did he?"

She rolled her eyes. "I should've known."

Piotr strode in. "Known what?" he asked curiously.

Rogue reddened. "Nothing," she muttered, hurriedly turning to the coffeepot.

Piotr's eyes moved between her and Remy, who couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from her.

A curiously gentle expression was on the Cajun's face, and Piotr wondered why it seemed familiar to him, and then it came to him: the same expression used to come across his father's face whenever he looked at his mother. His parents had loved one another deeply.

The Russian grinned, realizing where his roommate had been all night. "Ah. So, 'nothing' it was, then, which brought Remy to his bed just a moment before Logan asked for him, _da?"_ Remy reddened, and started to say something, but Colossus waved him to silence. "No, no, _comrade_," he said, grinning. "Happy I am, for you both. May I be the first to offer congratulations?"

Rogue blushed again, and muttered something incoherent when Piotr enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug. "I just want to tell—well, _everybody_," she confessed in a whisper to him. "The whole world! Well, except Logan. And maybe Kurt. But I'm glad _someone_ knows."

Remy slid an arm around her waist and kissed her. "I feel de same way. But speaking of Logan—"

Once again, Piotr waved him to silence. "Your secret—with me, it is safe." he assured them. "I shall not even tell _Katja,"_ he promised.

"T'anks, _homme," _Remy said fervently, and went to help Rogue with breakfast.

The rest of the team gathered quickly; a tense silence hung over the table, as the teens considered the seemingly impossible: that in less than an hour, they could very well be fighting for their lives against the _Professor._ (Except Amanda, of course, who had already agreed to stay in the inn, undefended as she was.)

The only ones who seemed to be unconcerned about the idea were Logan, of course, and Remy and Rogue, who were casting teasing, flirtatious looks at each other. Neither seemed to be able to keep from smiling.

Kurt frowned. This was extremely unlike his dour, standoffish sister, who only smiled this widely when Remy kissed her or something, as though she couldn't help the happy expression in response to his attention. But the kiss-resultant smiles usually lasted only a few moments before she remembered herself and resumed her Goth persona. What could possibly get her to smile continuously for above half an hour?

A sudden suspicion entered his mind. "_Meine schwester,_" he called to her. She ignored him, busy giggling as Remy tickled her, his arms as far around her as they would go. "_Rogue._" He tried again. This time she jumped a bit, looking mildly surprised as she turned to him.

"Yes? I'm Bess right now, dear; Roarke and I almost can't help being, ah, 'in charge' today, and the more comfortable we are with these bodies, the better chance we have at beating Snythe."

"Oh. Well, nothing that can't wait," Kurt replied weakly, mentally sighing in relief as he finished the last of his breakfast. For a moment he'd thought—well. He'd forgotten the unusual effect Bess and Roarke were having on his sister and teammate. In any case, he was glad he wouldn't have to end their trip by murdering Remy. That would make things awkward.

_Thanks for the save, Bess,_ Rogue said to the other girl in her mind.

The ghost laughed. _Do you think I went to all the trouble of easing your chaperone's mind only to have your so-protective brother figure everything out? _

Rogue chuckled. _I suppose not. Still, helping me keep Remy alive another day is definitely appreciated. The longer time that goes by without anyone knowing, the better chance we have to break the news to them at the right time, _without_ getting Remy killed. _

Logan burst in the door, snow blowing around him. His entrance killed what little conversation there was. "Get ready, kids," he said grimly. "Professor X is here. And he's got that ghost smell on him."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They assembled in the walled courtyard of the inn, fragments of snow dusting the worn surface. They heard the steady thrum of an engine, and then a creak as the brake was applied. The thrum stopped, and was replaced by a pair of feet and the squeak of a wheelchair crunching through the snow toward the inn.

The wheelchair rolled around the doorway cut into the tall wall, Old Robert just behind the Professor.

Xavier, for his part, had an overly solicitous look on his face as he wheeled toward them. He didn't seem to notice the team close ranks around him as he entered further into the courtyard. "Rogue? I hear your powers are giving you trouble again? Let's go inside, and we'll see if I can't help you with them."

Rogue stepped forward, a relieved expression on her face. "Professor X!" she exclaimed, as though it were difficult to speak. "Ah think I'm goin' –insane, here! _Please _help m-me." She stepped toward him, hands outstretched. The second before she made contact, she let Bess take over: the ghost was overwhelmingly powerful today, and ceding control was actually a relief.

"Yes, Professor X, your student has been having many problems lately," Bess' rich accent rolled out, sticking with their plan to keep Snythe ignorant of the true situation for as long as possible. The longer Snythe believed Rogue and Remy to be truly possessed, the longer he would maintain a 'Professor X' façade in front of the others. "But I assure you, those problems will be over shortly, as _she_ will no longer be present."

Professor X's brow furrowed in concern. "Rogue?" he said tentatively, not quite touching her outstretched hands. "Tell me what you're feeling."

Logan frowned: this certainly _sounded_ like Professor X. What if Roarke and Bess had it wrong and the professor _wasn't _possessed?

"Oh, Rogue won't be talking any more," Bess assured him airily. "It's Bess now, Bess Dawson."

"Rogue. You can't let someone's psyche take over your mind. You must fight! Come, let us go inside and I will help you. We _will_ get this 'Bess' out of your mind." He looked around at the others, most of whom were also looking a bit uncertain. "When did she absorb this Bess person? And why? She has control now."

"We, like, totally don't know, Professor!" Kitty exclaimed. "As soon as we got stranded here at this inn, she started talking in this other accent and acting like she lived here and talking like it was, like, 200 years ago or something! It's _really_ freaky, like something out of a movie."

"There's no one in the town named Bess, either, Chuck," Logan added. "I checked."

"Hmm." The Professor steepled his fingers in front of his face, thinking, then looked up at Bess/Rogue standing in front of him. "Why have you taken over Rogue?" he demanded.

"Because it's been so long," Bess sighed. "I simply couldn't resist. She was _so_ easy to take, and is _so_ easy to eliminate, piece by piece. Soon there won't be anything left, and we'll have our lives back!" She was clearly gloating.

"We?" The Professor leaned forward intently. "There's more than one of you in her mind?"

The girl laughed lightly as Logan made a shrugging movement, propelling Remy forward a few steps. "No, Chuck," he said. "Remy's been affected, too, probably because of his empathy."

Bess/Rogue turned as Roarke/Remy strode up to her and wrapped his arms around her, giving the Professor a defiant look. "My dear professor, may I introduce… Colin Roarke? He, too, will be joining me in this new chance at life."

_If this doesn't enrage Snythe enough to show himself, nothing will. But he has to reach outside of the Professor! _She continued, "In fact, he's further along than I. Your 'Remy' doesn't speak at all, now; I do believe he's been… well… thrown out entirely. Hope you don't mind."

She simpered mockingly, and then leapt backward as the Professor lunged toward Remy, nearly toppling from his wheelchair.

"You!" he howled, and it was clearly _not_ the Professor speaking. "You whoreson! You dog! I will destroy you _again_ before I allow you to regain life!" He raised his hands to his forehead in concentration, obviously trying to use the Professor's powers to harm Roarke.

"Ah," Roarke replied, smirking, "But you haven't got a troop of Redcoats to shoot for you this time, _Snythe." _He snarled as the hated name left his mouth.

The others snapped out of their indecision, and began a steady barrage of mid-level attacks against the professor. Roarke flinched, and batted at an invisible attacker. Kitty ran by the Professor, and winced as she phased him out of his wheelchair. _This is so, like, wrong!_

Lance shook the ground into a quagmire beneath the Professor, who began to sink into the newly formed mud.

"More!" Bess shouted. "He's still in control!"

Kurt began to teleport Roarke from place to place, and the other young man straightened and quit flinching; apparently a moving target was harder for Snythe to hit.

Meanwhile, Bobby began to refreeze the ground around him, and Snythe visibly struggled to free himself before he was swallowed up entirely. "You fools!" he shouted. "Do you want to kill your leader?"

"He'd want us to," Colossus replied, just before he started to heap huge armfuls of snow and dirt on top of the Professor, hindering his efforts to break free.

_Indeed, I do_, they all heard faintly in their minds; the Professor _was_ fighting, too. _Do what you must, kill me if you have to, but do not let him keep control of my powers!_

Roarke/Remy began to explode cards perilously close to the Professor, who began to systematically deflect the projectiles.

Logan, realizing that yet more distraction was needed, physically charged at the Professor, claws extended. He wasn't surprised when his attack was rebuffed by an invisible barrier that threw him into a wall. Undeterred, he threw himself at the Professor again, shouting, "All together! Now!"

The ground shook and opened beneath Professor X; Kitty ran by and phased him further down, as Piotr landed a pile of thick dirt right on his exposed face.

Bobby immediately set to freezing it in place, and the professor's struggles weakened. Logan's attack was more weakly deterred, and several of Gambit's cards got through, their explosions flashing off of the snow like blood.

Bess/Rogue had barely moved throughout the barrage, her face a mask of concentration. The Professor's head had been entirely buried for one long minute when she suddenly called out, "He's dying—Snythe's leaving—" She dove forward, and grasped the one part of Xavier not buried: his out flung hand.

The second her bare skin touched his, her eyes rolled into her head, and she collapsed to the ground. Roarke/Remy, too, folded like a marionette whose strings had been sliced.

There was silence for a moment. Then Remy stirred. "Get—Prof X—out—" he said hoarsely. "Bess has Snythe. He won't be going into de Prof again."

Hurriedly, nearly in hysterics, the others began to undo their terrible work. The ground loosened, the ice retreated, and Piotr swiftly unburied him as Kitty phased the dirt out of his clothes. The Professor was, to their universal relief, still alive, if only just.

"Take him inside," Logan directed. "Get him near the fire; warm him up. I'll bring Rogue and Remy in."

"Right," Kurt said, laying a hand on the unconscious Professor. With a puff of smoke and sulfur, they disappeared.

Logan sighed in relief, surveying the damage to the courtyard: he certainly didn't want to ever have to face off against the Professor again, even when Chuck was distracted. Those slams into the wall had _hurt._ And this was with the Professor _not_ entirely in control? He shuddered. There _was_ such a thing as too much power in one man.

He got an arm under Remy and heaved him to his feet; the Cajun leaned drunkenly, and slurred, "Rogue?"

"I'm gonna get her too. C'mon, let's get her and you inside, Gumbo."

"No—no—Bess—has Snythe—_and Rogue,"_ Remy stammered, lurching toward Rogue who, Logan now noticed, _hadn't _stirred when Remy had. She still lay on the snow, one hand outstretched.

He frowned. Was she breathing?

Remy abruptly flung himself at the prone girl, and Logan could only gape for a second: that cocky, self-assured little bastard was actually _sobbing_ as he cradled Rogue's head in his hands, and desperately clutched her to him. "Please come back—please come back—or take me too—"

Logan felt a surge of panic as he realized the young man was not just asking for Rogue to come back—he was actually asking the ghosts to come back _for him _if she was gone

_If she's dead, he wants to die?_ He wondered, appalled. _How did they get so tied up in each other and I didn't notice?_  
Remy had continued talking: "Don't make me break my promise—where she is, I am; where she goes, I go. I can't break a promise to _her_. I love her. _Please." _

Logan wasn't even sure who he was talking to any more, but Rogue had to be helped. He pushed Remy aside as best he could—the Cajun clung stubbornly to one hand—and tried to feel for a pulse. One was there, but thready, tentative. "Damnit," he swore, and vowed that he was _never_ going to let the Prof leave them alone on a vacation again. Ever.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Meanwhile, Rogue had found herself dragged along as Bess gleefully seized hold of Snythe when he tried to leap out of the Professor's dying body.

"Ha ha, you bastard!" the English girl gloated, as her strongly-glowing ghostly image, long dark hair swirling about her, grabbed firmly on to the arm of a cruel-looking man in a uniform. Her image nearly enveloped his. The uniformed ghost—Snythe, Rogue supposed—was watery, uncertain-looking. He seemed to realize the disparity in their appearances, too.

"What? You little bitch! How do you have power over me? Me, who have possessed more lives than can be counted! No one should be able to hold me! Least of all _you._"

"Didn't you realize what day it is? All Hallows' Day, fool, and you willingly walked to the same plot of land where _you_ killed _me._ A debt is owed, Snythe, and you shall finally pay it!"

"Hah! Perhaps. But this means giving up that second chance at life! What of that, girl?"

"That was a ruse, you great idiot, a plan to exact our revenge against you. That second life means naught to me or Roarke!"

"But I think it means something to _that_ one, doesn't it?" Snythe asked shrewdly, nodding at Rogue where she hovered. "Shall _she_ pay, as well?"

Bess gasped, and twisted her head to look at Rogue. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you in your body?"

"I—I don't know," Rogue said nervously. "I thought this was part of your plan—?"

Bess shook her head frantically. "No! We must have become too entangled to easily separate, between your powers and my memory-sharing. I must have pulled you with me when I made the leap across the barrier." Snythe chuckled evilly, and she punched him. He subsided.

"Pulled who with you?" Another spirit-voice intruded, accompanied by another strongly-glowing image: A young man in a brilliant scarlet coat and rich leather breeches, guns slung from his chest and a sword at his side. His brightness, too, eclipsed Snythe's weak light as he neared the trio. He stopped when he caught sight of Rogue. "You! Were you injured during the fight?"

"No—at least, I don't _think_ so…"

Bess shook her head. "No. Her body was not harmed. I think I pulled her with me accidentally."

Snythe cackled. "A fine problem for our _oh_ so moral Roarke and his leman! Do you spare the girl, and set me free, or do you give your mortal enemy his due, and condemn an innocent to death?"

Roarke rolled his eyes, and scoffed. "Neither. You never _did_ understand love, did you?" he sounded almost sad. He turned to Rogue.

"It's very simple," he told her. "You don't need our help to get back, just head toward Remy."

"What?" Rogue turned: blank grayness stretched all around. "But I can't see him!"

"It's simpler than you think. Just go to where you feel loved. You know the way; you just don't realize it yet."

"But—"

"Don't doubt love, dear," Bess said kindly. "After all, it helped Roarke and I find each other time and again for 250 years. You're still alive. It should be easy."

"Not if I—" Snythe started, and reached toward Rogue, who shrank back. Bess and Roarke closed around him.

"Time to face your Creator, Snythe," Roarke said. "Have you said your prayers?" With a flash, the trio vanished, Snythe's despairing wail echoing behind them.

Rogue turned in a slow circle, but the view never changed. "Go to where you feel _loved_?" she snorted. "What the Sam-Hill does _that _mean?" She frowned, sat on more gray nothingness, and began to think.

"Go to where you feel loved. Go to where you feel loved. Well, obviously that's when I'm with Remy, and Kurt, and Logan, and Kitty—_they_ all love me in their own way.

"Kitty's such a good friend to me, even when I'm mean and don't deserve it—" A memory of a painstakingly done birthday card intruded, making her smile. "She sure spent a lot of time making sure that card was just perfectly 'me,' even when she could've bought me a Hallmark card and I wouldn't have known the difference."

As she remembered the unexpected rush of pleasure that thoughtfulness had brought her, she felt a sudden tug at her right hand. Startled, she leapt up and followed the tug, continuing to think aloud.

"An' it's kinda weird to put the words 'love' and 'Logan' into the same sentence, but he shows he cares about us all the time, just in his own weird 'bikes and leather and pain' sort o' way. He helped me out a lot after my powers went haywire, and he's always pushed me to be better than I want to be myself." Another scrap of memory, this time of Logan shouting at her, encouraging her, as she free-climbed a canyon wall. It had been purest hell, and she hadn't been able to use her arms for a day and a half, but the sense of triumph had been worth it. She hadn't believed Logan before.

Another tug rewarded her thoughts, this time to the right and forward a bit.

"Kurt… Kurt is the ultimate overprotective brother. But it's not just any brother who'll forgive you fo' shoving your statue-mother off a cliff… or being such a jerk to him… or yellin' at him fo' eating the last of the toast. And I can always talk to him about everything—except Remy, of course. But even his distrust of Remy is on my behalf. He doesn't want me to get my heart broken any more than I do, so I can't really get mad at him fo' caring. After some of the stuff I've done, I'm surprised he still does. But he does. He loves me, and it's a true gift."

A stronger pull yet, more directly forward.

"Remy…" Even saying his name brought a full smile to her face. "Remy just—loves me. Not for any reason, or from getting to know me, or anything. From the first minute, Remy loved me in some way, and it's only gotten stronger and deeper as we've been together. Remy doesn't ask for anything in return, doesn't expect anything in return. Hell, he was interested in me back when we thought I'd _never_ be able to touch anyone ever again—and that was when he didn't know me, when I was the enemy!

"Even his kidnapping me was after long, thoughtful watching. Sure, he needed me to help him, but it was also to shake me up, make me realize what I had goin' for me. 'People watchin' over me,' he said, an' even then he was one o' them.

"An' he's honest, a weird thing to say about a thief, but he is. He'll own up to anything he's done, 'because he's usually done it for some reason or other. Not always 'good' reasons, exactly, but he doesn't just go off completely wild. There's always a purpose, a goal for him. Except with me. He's just happy to be with me, and I'm happy to be with him. We don't have to talk or anything, either. Just bein' around each other is enough.

"I just wish," she finished wistfully, "That if I have to spend the rest o' Remy's life waiting for him in this grayness, that I could've touched him—kissed him—one more time."

The strongest pull yet, a yank really, that jerked her off of her feet and through—something—a barrier that'd been between herself and—

Remy was holding her hand. His tears were cooling on her face, and dimly Rogue was aware of someone else's hand at her throat.

Her lungs were burning as though she'd been holding her breath, and when she drew in air deeply, the hand at her throat jerked back, and she heard Logan curse.

Remy's hand tightened on her own. "_Chere_?" Was all he got out before she dragged his face down to hers, kissing him deeply.

"Your hand, it was your hand, drawing me back, showing me the way to go…" she babbled half-coherently against his lips, realizing where the tugging had come from. "Every time I thought of love, you pulled me closer to you—or I pulled myself closer—I don't know—"

"I don't know, either—" Remy got in, and kissed her again before scooping her up bodily. "But let's worry 'bout that later. Let's get you inside."

"Stripes?" It was Logan , of course, trailing concernedly after them. "Are you all right?"

"Just now," she replied, leaning her head on Remy's warm shoulder, as he carried her into the inn, "Just now, I think I'm about perfect." She lifted her head as Remy settled her onto the couch beside him, and looked back at Logan. "But thanks for asking. I know you really, truly care." She leaned against Remy again, his arm coming around her. "I know I'm loved."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

So… comments? Slightly early Happy New Year, everyone!

I think there will be a postlude or epilogue. Unless everyone thinks it's finished. :) Let me know.

Resolve to submit more reviews in 08! Feed your authors!


	10. Full Circle

Ok, this started out as an epilogue, but grew into a whole final chapter… enjoy nonetheless! –Alara

Black is the Color

By Alara

Chapter 10: Full Circle

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Once everyone had calmed down, Logan checked on the Professor, who seemed to be resting comfortably, considering he'd just nearly been smothered. He remained unconscious, though, and when Logan announced that they would, unfortunately, have to spend at least the rest of the day there, everyone started to groan: they wanted out of here!

Then the collective groan stopped abruptly, as they all remembered they'd nearly killed the Professor an hour before, and so they really oughtn't begrudge him a day's rest.

"Besides," Kitty remarked, "the ghosts are, like, gone, so we totally don't have anything to worry about except who's going to make the hot chocolate."

The others, sprawled in weary positions around the spacious room, nodded their agreement.

"Who _is_ making the hot chocolate, anyway?" Rogue asked interestedly from where she lay, her head in Remy's lap, her eyes closed. "'Cause _I'm_ not moving, and that means Remy's not, either."

"I don't know. _Someone's _in ze kitchen, though." Kurt commented, and peered across the room at them half-suspiciously. Remy had maintained a constant contact with Rogue, and just now had a hand firmly tucked around her arm, his fingers moving against the smooth skin thoughtlessly. "Hey, vhy do you two get to take up ze whole couch? Move over." He started toward the couch, intent on getting Rogue to at least sit up to make room—and quit half-lying on Remy.

Her eyes opened to slits, and one eyebrow rose. "I'll say it again: _I'm_ not moving, and _Remy's_ not moving. We get the couch because, for the first time in—what, three days?–there are two and _only_ two people sitting here. Next time, _you_ can be possessed, and _you'll_ get the couch to yourself."

Kurt subsided, grumbling, but quieted when Amanda smiled and leaned against him. "Behave, Kurt." The whisper was much sharper than her smile.

He turned to her, surprised. "Vhat?"

"Don't be such a jerk to them. Don't you trust Rogue at all?"

"I trust her. Not _him, _though."

"Huh," she said thoughtfully. "That's what my daddy says about _you,_ y'know."

He sputtered. "I vould never—"

"_Of course_ you wouldn't. But he's assuming the worst of you because you're a mutant. Just like _you're_ assuming the worst of Remy because he was a thief."

"I—that—that's not the same."

"Isn't it?"

"I can't help being a mutant. He _chose_ to be a thief!"

"I thought he was raised to be a thief?"

"Vell, yes." He didn't like where the eminently logical Amanda was taking him.

"Then I would say he never really had a choice until recently, and didn't he give it up?"

"Well, yes. Apparently, at least," he had to admit.

"Didn't he give it up _for Rogue?_"

". . ." His chagrined silence answered for him. He _had_ been expecting the worst from Remy simply based on his reputation—but whose word was that reputation based on, anyway? No one he'd assume was telling the truth, certainly. And he knew how rumor distorted things; once they'd been outed as mutants at school, there were a host of former friends who refused to believe they were anything but power-hungry maniacs, despite knowing them well.

"And in any case, you're totally dissing Rogue by not trusting Remy."

"_Vhat?_ How?"

"You're not trusting her to make her own decisions, or trusting that she can deal with a bad decision on her own. Trust me, if she needs help, she'll ask for it, but you really need to give her credit for being able to take care of herself and for having a brain. No wonder she gets mad at you and Logan for being so ridiculous!"

"We aren't—it's just—" he sputtered, indignant, for a moment. Then his sense of fairness asserted itself. "Vell. It's vhat brothers are supposed to do! But I'll try not to be so…obnoxious," he added, at her pointed glare.

"Good." She tucked her arm through his, and snuggled against him. "'Cause I, at least, want to make better use of your time."

He turned to look at her, confused. "Like wha—"

She grinned even as she kissed him, and laughed as he fell off his chair in shock. Amanda didn't usually indulge in PDAs, but if _this_ was what she meant by 'better use of his time…' His mind spiraled off onto new, interesting paths, and wasted no time scrambling back up to his perch.

Rogue sat up abruptly, and glared at them. Inwardly, Kurt groaned. Why would she choose now, of all times, to pay him back for his policing of Remy's movements?

Then he realized she was glaring at someone _behind_ him, and spun. Rogue glaring was rarely a good thing.

Old Robert stood in the doorway to the kitchen, a tray of mugs in his hands.

"Hot chocolate?" he offered, smiling.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

After the resulting furor settled down, it was established that Old Robert had one final task to fulfill before he, too could 'move on,' and it was, inevitably, for Remy and Rogue to help him. Them _alone_, and Old Robert threatened to haunt them forever if anyone followed.

Puzzled, Rogue and Remy pulled on their boots and followed him outside where he indicated they should pick up two unnoticed, small shovels leaning against the wall. Then he led them unexpectedly up an old, old track that led up to the moor.

Once they were at the windswept top—a task that took about forty minutes—the corporeal ghost turned to them. "Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I've brought you here."

"Yeah." Rogue waved a hand at him irritably, hunching into her coat. "You don't have to make a big speech; just tell us. It's freezing up here."

He nodded complacently, turned, and started to walk away. Startled, Rogue and Remy simply stood where they were for a moment, then jerked into a fast walk as the old man turned and shouted at them, "Well? What're you waiting for? Come along!"

They followed him for about a half-mile along a windy, windswept path that was just the slightest bit familiar to both of them, a sensation they were by this point heartily sick of. It was just as well, though, as the path darted around marshy areas and deadly bogs, and was often difficult to see. Old Robert, too, seemed to be gradually becoming less substantial as they walked along.

Eventually they came to a low stone wall, and Old Robert stopped abruptly. "We're here." He announced.

Remy looked around. "Um, _homme…_ where?"

"The monastery, of course," Old Robert said impatiently, and then relented when he saw the confusion on their faces. "Of course. You might not remember." He walked through the wall and continued for some thirty feet, then indicated they were to join him. Once she stepped over the wall, Rogue could see the foundation and ruined walls of the monastery more clearly; obviously, the place had not been in use for quite some time. The moor seemed to be swallowing the very walls, and the local flora was assisting in obscuring the rest.

Old Robert was fading visibly as he spoke quickly. "Now, I haven't much time; dig, here, straight down, 'til you find what was left there. Bess and Roarke ask that you put what you find to good use, and that you _tell_ people how it really was, _who_ they really were. Bess was no minx, and Roarke no indiscriminate robber. When I was alive, I tried to tell the villagers, but no one believed me. They preferred to believe what they wanted to believe. Perhaps you'll be able to rectify that inadvertent wrong so I, too, might go to my rest." The longing in his voice was unmistakable.

"You mean you don't get to, well, rest in peace 'til that's done?"

He smiled sadly. "The curse I laid upon myself was that I would not know any rest until Bess and Roarke were reunited, Snythe was banished, and _all_ of the wrongs caused by my foolish actions were set right. This," he indicated the ground, "and the story are all that is left to correct. My thanks to both of you—" His form faded entirely, and for a moment, only his voice remained: "I'm sure you'll do a _fine_ job of it, a _fine _job indeed."

The voice faded, but they could still sense the unrest in the air, attuned as they both now where to ghostly maneuverings. Shrugging at each other, they began to dig where Old Robert had indicated. At least the work kept them warm.

"So," Rogue panted, as they heaved shovelful after shovelful of dirt away, "Are we going to tell Logan?"

"Tell him 'bout what? Wait, there's a rock."

"About you—and me." She leaned down to take the sizeable rock he handed up, tossed it some distance away, and then resumed shoveling.

"What about—you'n me?"

"That we're sleeping together." She said matter-of-factly.

He nearly chopped through his own foot with his shovel. "You want t' get me killed, _cherie?"_

"Am I a one-night stand?" she countered, then continued, "I figure we tell the Professor first, so he can soften Logan up, 'cos you _know_ the Professor will know as soon as he wakes up and sees us in a room together. He doesn't try to pry, but I've been on the other side of his powers a time or two. Sometimes stuff just won't be ignored."

"Mmh." Remy grunted, whether in reply or with the effort of shoveling, she couldn't say. Undaunted, she continued.

"And then Logan can blow up at us, threaten to kill you, threaten to throw me in a convent, but at least he can't accuse us of sneaking around or lying. He'd hate that worse."

"Says you," Remy half-smiled. "I'm perfectly content wit' lyin' t' Wolverine as long as it keeps Remy alive."

"Pfft. Coward."

"T'ought y' wanted me t' keep dis body in one piece fo' you?" he said. "What's changed?"

"I realized that I'm eighteen now and I have the ultimate weapon to use against Logan."

He frowned at her. "What's dat?"

"I can threaten to elope with you."

He did drop the shovel this time. "_What?_"

"Were you planning on dating me for the rest of our lives?" she asked. "I know that you love me, and I know that I love you. Thanks to recent events, we know that it's the kind of love that _will_ make it through hard times and will grow as we do. That pretty much sounds like the 'til death do us part' kind of love to me. Wouldn't you marry me, if it meant being together?" she asked, a touch worriedly.

He stared at her, dirt spattering both of them, openmouthed.

"Say something," she urged.

His mouth stretched into a grin. "Was dat a proposal, _chere?"_

Her own jaw dropped, then snapped closed. "I guess it was." She blinked. She hadn't intended for the conversation to go quite this way, but… "Yeah. Would you marry me, Remy?"

"In a minute," he said swiftly. "Would_ you_ marry _me?_"

"For a lifetime," she returned, smiling. "But we knew that already."

"Yeah." He resumed shoveling. "For several lifetimes, apparently." He considered. "Dat could get boring."

Her next shovelful hit him across the chest.

He smirked, then stopped mid-strike as his shovel scraped across something wooden.

Carefully they sifted through the dirt 'til they uncovered a small wooden, iron-bound trunk. The lock was as soft as butter to Remy's expert fingers as he charged the lock slightly and detached it from the trunk.

The lid creaked open, and they gasped as the contents were revealed.

Coins of all shapes and sizes, of gold and silver and copper and tin, littered the trunk, as did several necklaces, rings, and assorted gems. The cloth bags they'd apparently been in had fallen away to vague scraps of fabric, and the silver and copper were black and green with tarnish. A few leather satchels had weathered the centuries far better, and one contained the distinct crackle of paper. Gingerly, Remy pulled out a letter written in two distinct hands.

The first portion seemed to be an official document of some sort; the other was written in a bold scrawl, obviously added to the bottom of the document later, as well as the edges and back. This second portion read:

_I include this document in my trunk to safeguard the good monks who pardon my many sins to help me remedy far larger ones committed by others in power. Some of the items contained within this chest shall be easily recognized as Church property, and so as to avoid any blame falling on the__m__, I attest that the following is __a __true__ and full account:_

_On the __28__th__ day of November, in the year 1751, I, Colin Roarke did arrest and rob the Archbishop of York while he travelled the highway running hard by this monastery. I did not know him for the archbishop until after he had already divested himself of purse and jewellery at my behest; I believed him to be another Church official, an individual much corrupt and in need of correcting. Once he revealed himself to me, I submitted myself to his keeping, as he is much spoken of as a man of humility before God, as befits one in his station, and has been rare in these recent times._

_He proved his humble reputation to be true as his retinue was quite small—hence why I robbed him and mistook him for that other—and even after my having robbed him, invited me quite politely to eat with him. His sense of humour is to be commended, as well, as he solemnly told me that it would be __un__safe for me to venture forth, as highwaymen were known to traverse the same road upon which we then stood._

_Thus defeated by kindness and gentleness both, I agreed to sup with him, and once we few sat round a fire, he demanded of me my name, which I meekly gave. _

_"Colin Roarke," he repeated thoughtfully, as though it meant something to him, though what that was I should not discover until later. Then he urged me to tell him my story, and how I, obviously an educated and decent man, had fallen to highway robbery._

_I poured out my sad tale, how I had joined the king's army and fought well an__d__ honorably for some several years. During that time, I drew the eye and enmity of my commanding officer, as he reckoned some of my honours ought to be his. Thus, when the army was reduced, I found myself no longer in the king's employ, though I had thought my experience sufficient to guarantee that I be one of the soldiers kept on in service. _

_Upon returning to my home district to see the girl I loved, I saw how the reduction of the army had led many former soldiers to turn to brigandage and robbery to support themselves, and (more grievously I thought) thus allowed petty officials to abuse their positions, blaming any suspicious blanks in their ledgers on those same brigands' theft. The officials grew fat and rich off their people's misery, and were above the law as it could not be __definitely__ proved that the funds had not been stolen. I vowed to do what I could to set it right, but quickly discovered to my dismay that the only way to do so would be to turn to robbery myself; or call it reverse-robbery if you will, for I stole from those I knew to be stealing from the people._

_Eventually I acquired a name amongst those same people, who glibly said they hadn't seen me when I'd just ridden by, and who helped my dearest, my 'Bessa, distribute the monies I'd stolen back.__ I'd been setting aside small amounts for us, as well, so that as soon as I might, I could leave the deceitful life I was leading and marry and live in relative peace._

_I flatly informed the archbishop that I'd__ fully__ intended to rob one of his prelates __that night as my final act of __brigandage__, and had merely mistaken the archbishop for that man. To my surprise, instead of growing angry with me, he laughed._

_He had, it transpired, been on his way to personally investigate allegations that the prelate in question was stealing Church funds, and to a degree quite applauded my aim. He had in his past been a soldier himself, he told me, and so understood what a blow it was to lose occupation and vocation all at once._

_"But," he told me sternly, "I cannot have a highway in my diocese threatened by a robber. You said this was to be your last ride; why should I believe that?"_

_I explained to him that I had made a promise to my sweet Arabessa that I should quit the robber's life as soon as I might collect enough for us to live on __so__ I could learn a new, honest trade. She hated that I must rob to help the unfortunates, but understood the necessity. I hate to grieve her in any way, though, and so had been working my hardest to achieve my goal and quit the illegal life as soon as I might._

_To my surprise, the archbishop smiled at this reply. "I have heard of you, __Highwayman __Roarke," he informed my astonished self. "In fact, it was in hopes of meeting you that I chose this particular route to traverse to meet with my prelate." I was agog and could form no reply. "I have a proposition for you; it would be a shame to put to disuse such martial skills as you po__s__sess, but neither can I allow you to continue abusing those skills, even in a good cause."_

_He paused, thought, then put the following__ extraordinary proposal__ to me: "__The king has commissioned me to __find __a bailiff for these parts, as t__he robbery on the highways has __become such a hazard to the common traveler. I can say I had heard of your prowess while in the King's army, and so came to seek you out and request that you fulfill that position. Your duties would include keeping the roads safe from these selfsame brigands, patrolling them, defending their victims to the death if you must, and also to assist me when I am in the area when allegations of__ corruption arise. In return__, you will receive a very little bit of land, a house, and a salary from the king's purse. Of course, you must solemnly swear to me that you shall never again engage in any act of theft or robbery so long as you live."_

_This was all I had ever looked for—so of course I gave my glad consent to the arrangement, and was ready to race off and tell my 'Bessa immediately. The archbishop smiled at my excitement, and requested that I stay until morning so that his clark could write up an official writ indicating that I was, once again, a king's man, any past wrongs I had committed were pardoned, and that I should be able to walk again as a free, unhunted man._

_In the morning, true to his word, he had the document written up and several copies made that I might have one for myself, another should be kept with him, __and__ yet a third to be sent to the king so he might know he had a new bailiff._

_He further pressed upon me the same purse and jewellery I had so rashly tried to part from him the previous night; I refused, but he pressed it upon me nonetheless, calling it a wedding present to my future bride.__ He also wrote out the banns for my Bess and me, and promised to read them in church that morning, that we might marry as soon as all could be made ready._

_Then he bid me travel with him for part of the day so he might further acquaint me with my newfound duties. It was not an arduous task, as the archbishop is a lively and understanding man, and toward sunset he gave me my leave to go and tell Bess the astounding news. _

_I went to Dawson's Inn to tell her, but before I could approach the building, a shot rang out; ironic, that the Redcoat troops should finally discover my place just after I am no longer a wanted man. I __shall__ have to wait a day or two for my new status to become more generally known__, but then can let my 'Bessa__ know all of our hopes have been fulfilled! _

_It is late now,__ well past midnight; the bells should be tolling one in the morning soon. I leave this document, sealed above by the archbishop, signed below by myself, in the keeping of the monks with all of my accumulated wealth, including those gifted to me by the archbishop. _

_With so much corruption about I should hate for any monk to be accused of theft, and so I will charge them to keep this document with the chest, and produce it should any question whence came a chest of gold to a poor monastery__ in the midst of such times as these._

_—Colin Roarke, Bailiff_

They were silent for a moment. "Wow." Rogue said finally. "That jerk Snythe didn't even have the _right_ to lie in wait for him—if the archbishop's decree had been made even _one_ day earlier, Bess would never have been killed, Roarke wouldn't have gone after Snythe, and you and I wouldn't be sitting here with a fortune in gold."

"Yeah." Remy agreed blankly, then brightened. "Still. If all dat hadn't happened, you and I wouldn't be engaged, right?"

She laughed. "Right. Hey, the ring'll have to be something special, you know, after all this."

"Hmm." He was bent over the chest again, apparently ignoring her. _Convenien__t,_ she laughed to herself, and marveled at the paper she held.

"Aha." He muttered, and pulled something out of one of the other leather bags. "How 'bout Roarke's ring for Bess, Rogue?"

"What?" Startled, she turned her attention to him, and found her gaze rived by a gorgeous ring of pale gold, ruby, onyx, and diamond. "Is that really--?"

"As soon as I saw it, I knew it was de ring he bought fo' her…" he said, half to himself. "Actually, he had it made for her. Gold fo' her skin, ruby for her lips, onyx for her hair, an' diamond for her eyes."

She sighed and reached out for the ring. He took her hand and gently slid the ring on to her finger. It fit perfectly—and it felt right. "I really shouldn't," she began. "Won't the country want to keep everything found in the chest? I thought that's what they usually do with found treasure."

"True 'nough. But who's to say _I_ didn't give you de ring?" he asked, a devilish grin slashing his face.

She laughed. "We _are_ engaged, after all." She put her hand out and admired the new addition.

He stood. "Now, let's get dis all back to de inn so we can get out o' here—finally."

"What do you think Cyclops an' de redhead will say about our time here?" he asked her curiously.

She snorted. "That we're making it all up, probably. Except the engagement thing. That'll piss them off—that we beat them to the punch."

"Know what'll piss 'em off even more?"

"Hmm?"

"Learning we've slept together when it's still hard for him to even _kiss_ her properly," he snickered.

She stopped. "Ooh, they _will_ hate that. Didn't realize that would be a side benefit." She chuckled evilly, then helped him heave the trunk free.

"What _are_ we going to do with the money?" she wondered, as they hauled the heavy trunk out of the hole.

"Hmm. Use it t' finance our elopement?" he suggested.

"Nah. Let's buy you some Kevlar so it'll be harder for Logan to skewer you."

"Hmm. How 'bout we use it to bribe Professor X to hold Wolverine _and_ Kurt still when we tell them?"

She paused, considering. "Mmh… no. He won't be bribed."

"Damn."

"_Magneto_, on the other hand…"

"I knew I loved you."

"I love you, too."

They walked off into the bright sunlight, hauling the heavy chest back towards their friends, their family, as they discussed their equally bright future together.

Behind them, ghostly chuckles rippled across the ruins of the abbey, and one final whispered message:

_Thank you._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Well, that's the end!

And, for those curious but too lazy to Google it, here is the full text of Alfred Noyes' _The Highwayman._(His name is sometimes spelled "Noyce.")

Below it is the folk song "Black is the Colour of My True Love's Hair," which also has contributed themes and ideas (and the title) for this piece. And before someone gets smart, there _are_ at least four different versions of the song that I know of, so if you've heard the words a little differently, that's ok.

**The Highwayman**

PART ONE

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;

They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,

And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord's daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord's daughter,

The landlord's red-lipped daughter,

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

Watch for me by moonlight,

I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;

And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,

When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,

A red-coat troop came marching—

Marching—marching—

King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,

But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

There was death at every window;

And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that _he_ would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;

They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!

"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.

She heard the dead man say— _Look for me by moonlight;_

_Watch for me by moonlight;_

_I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!_

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,

'Til now, on the stroke of midnight,

Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!

Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

_Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot!_ Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;

_Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot,_ in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding,

Riding, riding!

The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

_Tlot-tlot,_ in the frosty silence! _Tlot-tlot,_ in the echoing night!

Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood

Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!

Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear

How Bess, the landlord's daughter,

The landlord's black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,

When they shot him down on the highway,

Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

_And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, _

_When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, _

_When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, _

_A highwayman comes riding— _

_R__iding—riding— _

_A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door._

_Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard; _

_He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred; _

_He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there _

_But__ the landlord's black-eyed daughter, _

_Bess, the landlord's daughter, _

_Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair._

Black is the Colour

Refrain: _Black is the colour of my true love's hair_

_ Her lips are like some roses fair_

_ She has the sweetest face and the gentlest hands_

_ I love the ground wheron she stands_

Vs.1: I love my love and well she knows

I love the ground whereon she goes

But sometimes I wish the day will come

That she and I will be as one

_ Ref._

Vs.2: I walk to the Clyde for to mourn and weep

But satisfied I never can sleep

I'll write her a letter, just a few short lines

And suffer death ten thousand times

_ Ref._


End file.
